We are entering what would normally be the home stretch of the annual Supreme Court term.  And it is becoming relatively clear that most of the major opinions for this term will be coming from Chief Justice John Roberts.

As we have noted in past end-of-term posts, the U.S. Supreme Court attempts to balance the number of lead opinions that each chamber has.  This balancing occurs in two ways:  within each monthly two-week argument session and over the entire term.  For example, if there are ten cases argued during a given month, one justice will be assigned two cases and the other justices will be assigned one case each.  And a justice who gets two cases in one month will probably one get one case the next month.

By this time of the term, we usually have enough opinions issued to have a sense (not 100% certain because it is possible that a 5-4 case may flip after the first draft of the tentative majority opinion and the tentative dissent are circulated) of who probably has the case.  This year, we have almost all of the cases from October, November, and January and all of the cases from December.  While we only have about half of the cases from February (and obviously none from May), the look from the first four arguments is somewhat conclusive. Continue Reading...