As the calendar flips to June, the Supreme Court tends to move to center stage of political life in America.  While, technically, the annual term of the Supreme Court runs from October to September, the Supreme Court tries to finish issuing opinions in its cases by the end of June.  As a result, June has most of the opinions on the most divisive and politically important cases. 

At this point, we have some information on what to expect for this month.  We know the cases that were argued (as the last argument was on April 24). We also know which cases have been decided and which cases remain to be decided and when those cases were argued.  That is a key fact because of how the Supreme Court usually operates.  At the Supreme Court, cases are argued in a two-week argument session (followed by a period of at least two weeks without argument).  In each argument week, the cases are discussed at a weekly conference (typically on Friday) and a tentative vote is taken.  After that vote, the senior justice in the majority (either the Chief Justice or the longest serving Associate Justice) assigns a justice to write the case.  (With the current splits on the court, in most cases, the senior justice will be either Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Ginsburg.)  Regardless of who assigns the cases, the assigning justice tries to keep the assignments balanced within the argument session (no more than two per argument session) and over the term as a whole.  This year, the argument sessions ranged from six cases to thirteen cases.  When all of the argument sessions are combined, there were sixty-nine argued cases (actually seventy, but one was quickly dismissed without opinion) for which an opinion either has been or will be issued.  Thus, we expect each justice to have seven or eight opinions for the entire term. 

At this point in time, we have the most information on the first four argument sessions.  Typically, opinions are issued between three and five months after the argument; so the Supreme Court has issued opinions in most of the “early” cases.  In October, there were nine cases argued (technically ten, but one of the cases was argued during the first week before Justice Kavanaugh was on the court and was quickly set for reargument in January implying a 4-4 split).  Of those nine cases, eight have an opinion.  In November, there were twelve cases argued; and opinions have been issued in eleven cases.  In December, there were ten cases argued; and opinions have been issued in eight cases.  Finally, in January, there were eleven cases argued; and opinions have been issued in eight cases.  On the opposite side, we only have a total of three opinions from the cases argued in February and March and none from the April arguments. Continue Reading...