As we have discussed for the past several weeks, the Supreme Court is nearing the end of its term.  After two opinion days this past week, we are down to ten cases left on the docket (or eight if you treat the two Affirmative Action cases and two student loan cases as one case each).  At this point in time, we know that Tuesday will be an opinion release day.  It is almost certain that there will be opinions on Wednesday or Thursday (or maybe both days).

As noted in past posts, the Supreme Court tries to keep things balanced within each month (i.e. if there are fewer than nine cases to be decided from one of the “monthly” argument sessions, it is highly unlikely that any justice will be assigned multiple opinion) and across the term as a whole.  In the past weeks, we still had enough cases left undecided from March and April to leave things murky.  But things are now looking very clear (with the understanding that authorship can shift if the assigned justice loses the majority or a case gets dismissed).  But none of the cases issued so far look to have flipped and the one dismissed case was not pending long enough to get assigned.

That balance for the term is key for the projection for November and February.  We are likely looking at a total number of opinions for the term in the mid-fifties.  That means that no justice should have more than seven opinions for the term, and, if any justice has seven opinions, the rest should have six opinions. Continue Reading...