We are now down to two weeks left before the effective end of this year’s Supreme Court term.  (Officially, the term ends at the start of October when the next term begins.  But the Supreme Court usually issues all of its opinions before the Fourth of July and only handles emergency matters in July, August, and September.)  As was noted in the post two weeks ago, there are some unwritten rules regarding how the workload is distributed among the justices which makes it possible (not easy but possible) to speculate about who might have which cases.

One complicating factor in this year’s term (as discussed two weeks ago and last week) is that we do not know how many written opinions we are getting this term.  There are three ways that we could end up with fewer opinions:  1) in related cases, the Supreme Court could “consolidate” the cases and issue one opinion covering both cases (this normally happens before argument, but can happen when opinions are assigned); 2) in related cases, the Supreme Court could decide to issue a signed opinion in one case and an unsigned opinion in the other case; and 3) the Supreme Court can dismiss a case after argument.  We have already seen all three possibilities occur this term.  We could have up to eighteen opinions still to come this term.  At the present time, we know that we will have two opinion days this upcoming week.  In last week’s two opinion days, we only get five opinions, but we got six opinions on one day back in May.  My hunch says that we are likely looking at two or three opinion days the week of June 26, but the Supreme Court tends to keep that information closely held and it tends to not announce the last opinion day until the next-to-last opinion day.

How many opinions we have left matters because the Supreme Court tends to try to keep the workload balanced.  If we have eighteen opinions left, there will be fifty-six total opinions for the term which would mean that every justice would have six opinions with two justices getting seven opinions.  But it is possible that some of the remaining cases could have no opinion.  While, due to Justice Jackson recusing in the Harvard case, it is unlikely that the two Affirmative Action cases will be consolidated, it is easy to see a signed opinion in the North Carolina case and an unsigned opinion in the Harvard case.  We could see a consolidated opinion in the student loan forgiveness cases.  And everyone is expecting a dismissal in the North Carolina redistricting case. Continue Reading...