Recently in Court News Category

For the first time in thirty years, and despite recent opportunities to do so, the Supreme Court will address one of the touchiest of all subjects: prayer in public meetings.

Greece, New York begins its town meetings with an invocation. Though there is no official policy deciding who can open the meetings with a prayer, and despite the spot being open to all faiths, every single prayer from 1999 through 2007 was delivered by Christian clergy members. Not until two residents objected to the policy were other faiths included (though the town maintains that they had the right to do so earlier).

There’s something uniquely appealing about statistics. Maybe it’s because analyzing numbers and making correlation and causation arguments is conceptually similar to analyzing legal issues (gather evidence, make predictions with set levels of certainty, such as by a preponderance). Lawyers are analytical. Statistics are a useful tool to satisfy that tendency.

And while baseball has sabermetrics to help predict the performance of players and teams, the Supreme Court has Kedar Bhatia’s SCOTUSblog stat pack — which breaks down everything from the pace of judicial opinions released to the amount of times the Ninth Circuit has been reversed this term.

It’s a law geeks paradise, and from that data, one might be able to make some predictions:

Comcast. Dukes. Concepcion. Heck, Citizens United. The big-name pro-business rulings have come aplenty in this present incarnation of the Supreme Court. Is this a case of big names triggering the availability heuristic -- the principle that noteworthy events figure more prominently in our minds? (Planes are safer than automobiles, even though a plane crash makes the news.)

Or, do the stats back popular perceptions?

We Missourians live by one credo: show me, don't tell me. A study published by the Minnesota Law Review, and conducted by Lee Epstein, William M. Landes, and the grand Judge Richard A. Posner of the Seventh Circuit did exactly that, and found that the numbers match the rumors.

The Supreme Court isn't in a hurry to fill its docket for the 2013 Term. So far, the Court has only granted cert in 19 merit-based cases.

While there are already some stand outs in the next term -- like Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action --some of the recent rejects have drawn as much attention as the cases that have been granted.

This week alone, the Court denied certiorari in three cases that would have made for interesting arguments.

As spring actually starts to feel like spring, we're experiencing the same of end-of-school emotions that consume most high school kids this time of year: excitement and relief.

Exam season for SCOTUS litigators concluded on Wednesday as the Court heard its final pair of arguments for the 2012 Term: Metrish v. Lancaster and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar. Now the wait for grades and graduation the remaining opinions of the term begins.

If you spent Monday perusing the latest Supreme Court orders, then you may have noticed that the government is contesting Beer. (Ugh, Mondays.) For those of you following along with the federal judges’ cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) battle, U.S. v. Beer should ring a bell. That’s the case challenging a government decision to withhold COLAs guaranteed under the Ethics Reform Act of 1989.

The Act amended compensation and ethics rules for all three branches of the government. For judges, it limited the outside income they could earn and the honoraria they could accept, but provided for automatic COLAs — like other federal employees receive — to ensure that judges’ salaries would keep up with inflation.

Adam Chandler is something of a certiorari numbers buff. When Chandler isn't hard at work as an attorney in the Appellate Section of the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, he's crunching numbers about cert-stage amicus briefs.

Five years ago, Chandler used his mathematical wizardry to annoint a group of Supreme Court cert-stage all-stars. All-star status was awarded based on the number of amicus briefs that a friend of the Court submitted during a three-year period, and the corresponding number of petitions granted.

Now, Chandler has a new report on the all-stars at SCOTUSblog. While the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is now a two-time MVP, there are a several interesting newcomers to the all-star ranks.

Benjamin Franklin (paraphrasing Christopher Bullock) said “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

This April, there is one more certainty on Tax Day: The final session of the Supreme Court’s 2012 Term will kick off with arguments about gene patenting on Monday, April 15.

Alas, today is the sad day that we are sharing the final Supreme Court oral argument schedule for the final sitting of the term. Let’s see what’s on the Court’s plate this month, shall we?

The Supreme Court doesn't care about Internet memes or mass protests. The Justices aren't influenced by messages projected on the Court's darkened columns or Facebook profile pictures. The Court cares about standing.

And now, a lot of other people do, too.

Standing is finally a hot topic because the outcomes in the Proposition 8 and Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) cases could turn on a simple procedural issue: Can the Court even rule on the merits?

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in Hollingsworth v. Perry. In Hollingsworth, the Court is considering whether California's Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause, and whether the Court should even decide the case at all. Don't get your hopes up for a sweeping proclamation in favor of gay marriage; the Court seems hesitant to give such a "new" concept the go-ahead, Reuters reports.

But that's not necessarily an indication of how the Court will proceed in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) challenge, U.S. v. Windsor .

On Wednesday, the focus will shift to Windsor, in which the Court will mull whether DOMA Section 3 is unconstitutional.