As I noted in my post on Thursday’s decisions, we are nearing the end of the active part of the Supreme Court term.  (Technically, the term starts in October, but the Supreme Court is in recess over the summer barring any emergency case.)  While the Supreme Court does not list opinion days far in advance, they have fifteen argued cases left to decide.  Based on past practice, we are likely looking at four to six opinion days over the next two weeks to wrap everything up — likely Monday of both weeks and Thursday of this week with the other dates depending on when things are ready.

The easy part of this post is that the Supreme Court has now wrapped up October and November.  And we have most of the cases from December and January.    But this year’s docket offers several complications.  First, while the Supreme Court tries to keep each month’s opinion assignments balanced (and the term as a whole balanced), we have multiple months with fewer than nine opinions.  Second, we have several unsigned opinions from December and two opinions that covered multiple argued cases.  Third, Justice Barrett did not start until the November docket.  Based on what we know, there should be six opinions per justice (54 signed opinions for the term.)  As Justice Thomas has seven opinions, it looks like Justice Barrett will only have five opinions.

October and November had 18 cases which should have meant two opinions per justice which held true for every justice except Justice Breyer who had three opinions and Justice Barrett had one opinion which seems to reflect that Justice Breyer picked up the extra October opinion that would have gone to Justice Barrett.  (Justice Breyer may end up with seven opinions and somebody may have lost an opinion in light of Justice Thomas’s seven opinions or the court might just have altered who got the extra case as the term went along.) Continue Reading...