State of the Term
on May 24, 2005 at 12:16 pm
Updating this post from last week, the Court has now decided 45 argued cases and has 29 remaining.
All of the decisions from the October and November sittings have been issued.
For the December sitting, decisions are outstanding in Raich (medical marijuana) and Miller-El (Batson). Neither Justice Stevens nor Justice Souter has issued a majority opinion for the sitting, so they presumably are the authors.
For the January sitting, decisions are outstanding in Alaska v. United States (boundary dispute) and Rompilla v. Beard (life without parole instruction). Justice Kennedy has not written in that sitting and therefore is presumably writing one of them.
For the February sitting, decisions are outstanding on two very significant issues: Kelo (takings) and Van Orden / McCreary County (Ten Commandments, argued as two separate cases). Three other cases are outstanding from the sitting: Spector (foreign-flagged cruise ships and the ADA); Exxon / Ortega (diversity jurisdiction); and Orff (water contracts).
In the March and April sittings, only Medellin has been decided.
On the cert. docket, the Court has granted 23 cases thus far for next Term. The Justices need 32 grants to fill the December calendar before the summer recess begins.
The remaining nine cases will come from the five conferences between now and the Term’s end. In my estimation, five cases have particularly good chances:
04-989, Horton v. Bank One (& 04-1186) (bank diversity jurisdiction)
04-1131, Whitman v. DOT (& 04-1276) (federal employee suits) [Goldstein & Howe for petitioner]
04-1148, Rodriguez v. United States (Booker plain error)
04-1315, Long Island Care at Home v. Coke (home health care workers and the FLSA)
04-1329, Illinois Tool v. Independent Link (antitrust tying)
A number of the remaining grants are likely to come from the cases in which the Solicitor General will be filing briefs in response to “invitations” from the Court. The government has filed a brief in No. 04-293, Honeywell v. Hamilton Sundstrand (prosecution history estoppel) urging denial. The other briefs likely to be filed by this Friday so that the cases can be considered by the Justices by the end of the term are:
03-1202, Hewlett Packard Co. Employee Benefits v. Jebian (ERISA “deemed denial” of benefits)
03-10777, Keup v. Wis. Dep’t of Health & Fam. Servs. (Medicaid reimbursement)
03-1559, Bank of China v. NBM (“reasonable reliance†and RICO)
04-31, McFarling v. Monsanto Co. (restrictions on seed use)
04-165, Comstock Resources v. Kennard (False Claims Act original source restriction)
