This morning, Friday, Dec. 12, the justices are gathering for their final regularly scheduled private conference of the year to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review. The petitions set to be considered – or reconsidered – address several significant topics, including the scope of Second Amendment protections, a unique response to climate change, and whether the government can seize a $95,000 plane over a six-pack of beer.

Here is a brief overview of five notable issues that are in front of the court at this week’s conference.

Yesterday’s argument in FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v Saba Capital Master Fund showed a bench surprisingly receptive of private parties having the ability to sue investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940. Although the justices have been skeptical of implied rights of action in recent decades, most of them seemed to think that the statute went far enough to authorize the limited relief sought in the case before them, namely the right to invalidate a contract inconsistent with the statute.

A group of immigration judges on Wednesday afternoon urged the Supreme Court to leave in place a ruling by a federal appeals court that sent a dispute over a policy limiting their speaking engagements back to a federal trial court. The National Association of Immigration Judges told the justices that there was no need for them to step in because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit had merely directed a federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia, “to conduct fact-finding that may inform its resolution” of the group’s challenge.

I am pleased to introduce SCOTUSblog readers to the Interim Docket Blog, where Will Baude, Dan Epps, I, and surely others, will comment on Supreme Court interim orders and related matters.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday wrestled with the case of an Alabama man who has been on that state’s death row for more than two decades. The question before the justices was how the lower courts should have addressed Joseph Smith’s claim that he is intellectually disabled and therefore cannot be executed when Smith has taken five separate IQ tests over a span of almost 40 years. After roughly two hours of oral argument, the justices were divided over whether, as Smith contended, the lower courts had properly concluded, based on a wide range of evidence, that he is intellectually disabled.