Breaking News

The remainder of the Term

With no more than three weeks left in the Supreme Court’s current Term, the Justices are expected to move more rapidly in the coming weeks toward clearing the remaining decisions on their docket. There are 32 cases to be decided, but multiples on several issues indicate that all cases can be decided with 24 rulings. At the moment, there appears little likelihood that any of the cases will be put over for reargument in the next Term. The Court heard three re-arguments during this Term, but that was due to its change in membership, with Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., arriving at about mid-Term.

Since completing oral argument with a special sitting on May 18, the Court has continued to issue opinions only one day a week. Now that the middle of June is approaching, the Court is likely to begin releasing rulings on two or more days in the remaining weeks. Next Monday, at the close of the public session, the Court’s marshal may announce whether there will be another decision day in the coming week. At last once a week, the Court will issue orders granting or denying new cases; any newly granted cases will be heard in the next Term.

The Court’s last scheduled private Conference will be on Thursday, June 22, but the Court may hold other Conferences as necessary to finish its work. In any event, the Court is expected to complete its work and recess for the summer sometime toward the middle of the week of June 26. (See below for a list of all cases and issues yet to be decided.)


Here are the argued cases that remain to be decided, listed according to docket number, with a brief description of the issue:

04-607 — Laboratory Corp. v. Metabolite Laboratories (patentability of a naturally occuring process)
04-1034 (and a companion case) — Rapanos v. U.S. (Clean Water Act application to wetlands)
04-1170 — Kansas v. Marsh (constitutionality of a death penalty law that requires death if plus and minor factors are in balance) (re-argued case)
04-1360 – Hudson v. Michigan (remedy for violation of knock-and-announce rule for police entering a home) (re-argued case)
04-1376 — Fernandez-Vargas v. Gonzales (right of deported alien to return to U.S.)
04-1528 (and two companion cases) — Randall v. Sorrell (constitutionality of state ceilings on campaign expenditures)
04-1739 — Beard v. Banks (right of dangerous prison inmates to have access to newspapers, magazines and photographs)
04-8990 — House v. Bell (scope of right to present new evidence to show innocence of crime)
04-9728 — Samson v. California (authority to search parolee without a warrant or suspicion)
04-10566 (and a companion case) — Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon (state court duty to obey World Court ruling on arrested foreign nationals’ access to consular officer)
05-18 — Arlington School District v. Murphy (parents’ right to recover fees for expert witness in disabled child education case)
05-83 — Washington v. Recuenco (harmless error analysis for error in sentence enhancement)
05-128 — Howard Delivery v. Zurich American Insurance (priority in bankruptcy of claim for workmen’s compensation premiums)
05-184 — Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (Supreme Court power to decide constitutionality of war-on-terrorism war crimes tribunals, and the merits of that constitutional question)
05-200 — Empire Healthchoice v. McVeigh (private contractor right to enforce benefits for federal government employees)
05-204 (and three companion cases) — League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry (validity of Texas congressional redistricting plan)
05-259 — Burlington Northern Railway v. White (proof needed to show retaliation claim under Title VII job bias law)
05-352 — U.S. v. Gonzalez-Lopez (remedy for denial of access to counsel of choice in a criminal case)
05-409 — Kircher v. Putnam Funds Trust (federal appeals court power to review remand of securities case to state court)
05-416 — Woodford v. Ngo (scope of exhaustion of claims requirement under Prison Litigation Reform Act)
05-5224 and 05-5705 (two cases, perhaps one opinion) — Davis v. Washington and Hammon v. Indiana (exclusion of evidence of “excited utterances” in 911 calls or at a crime scene, under Crawford v. Washington)
05-5966 — Clark v. Arizona (right to make an insanity defense to disprove criminal intent)
05-7053 — Dixon v. U.S. (burden of proof on defense of duress or coercion in criminal case)
05-8794 — Hill v. McDonough (procedures available for challenges to lethal injection method of execution)