Relists, etc.
One significant relist. The Court has put over an abortion case for further consideration at its next conference: No. 04-1144, Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, a parental consent case.
The Court also relisted a capital case, No. 04-1170, Kansas v. Marsh.
The Court did not act on No. 04-1034, Rapanos v. United States, which involves the application of the Clean Water Act to nonnavigable waters. Nor will the case be considered at the Court’s next conference. That suggests that the petition is being held either for Raich or for another related petition now being briefed – No. 04-1384, Carabell v. United States Army Corps of Engineers.
UPDATE: The Court also took no action on a significant knock-and-announce criminal case that was on the List, because it has called for the lower court record in the case: Hudson v. Michigan (04-1360). The question is whether the remedy for police failure to knock and announce their arrival to search a home is exclusion of the evidence that results from the search. A Michigan Court of Appeals decision last June said that suppression of the evidence is not an appropriate remedy for violating the knock-and-announce rule. There is a conflict among lower courts on the issue.
I have noted over the last couple years that SCOTUSblog frequently indicates which interesting or important petitions will be considered at a particular Conference of the Justices.
I am aware that this information can be culled from (1) knowing which interesting petitions are pending and then (2) looking-up on the SCOTUS docket page the status of those cases. The SCOTUS docket page will list when the case was distributed for Conference.
Is this how SCOTUSblog tracks interesting petitions?
Or is there some list of cases/matters to be considered at Conference posted somewhere? In other words, is there a “Conference list” that I’ve been missing on the SCOTUS website?
TG responds: Nope, I personally review all of the 2000-or-so paid cert. petitions filed each term. Legal Times then uses the list I produce to publish its “Conference Call” feature.
Technically, there is a “Conference List.” It is distributed to the Chambers and, in redacted form, the press. (We don’t use it because a condition of acceptance is not to use it for publication purposes.) You can reverse engineer the list easily, however, just by putting the conference date into the Court’s docket search engine right after the petitions are distributed.
Comment by Jean-Claude Andre — May 16, 2005 @ 2:11 pm