I, and others, post on legal issues for the simple reason that almost every major political issue ends up in the courts — either as parties trying to use the courts to achieve what they could not achieve in the legislature or the simple effort of parties to apply a new law to particular situations.  For a variety of reasons, many politically significant decisions are issued by the Supreme Court in two or three key days near the end of June.  Since most political junkies are not avid court watchers until June, here are some FAQ’s about what will be happening between now and Monday (or maybe even later).

1)  Do we know what opinions will be issued on which days?  No, the Supreme Court keeps this information pretty much under wraps (in part because an opinion can be pulled at the last second if any  Justice wants one more chance to think about it).  

It’s approaching that time of year again — June at the Supreme Court.  The time of year when — with Congress merely slogging things out on legislation — attention in Washington D.C. turns to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court obliges with major decision on top of major decision.

For reasons that probably date back to the days when the Supreme Court Justices also heard cases in the Circuit, the Supreme Court has a tradition of wrapping up the business of deciding cases by the end of June.  For the most part, during the first part of the annual term, the Justices tend to take between two and five months to write an opinion on a case, with the exact length depending on the complexity of a case, the Justice’s writing style, and whether the decision is unanimous (by tradition, other Justices are given the opportunity to complete their separate opinions on a case and all of the opinions on a case are issued at the same time if there are multiple opinions).  Since the most significant cases tend to be split decisions, that tends to push them back and major decision from the December and January arguments sessions may not be issued until late May or early June where they share space with the decisions from the February, March, and April argument sessions (on which the Supreme Court lacks the time to take for or more months to complete their work).  Heading into Tuesday’s session (as the Court is taking Memorial Day off with the rest of us), there are twenty-eight cases still waiting for opinions and 5-6 weeks to go.  (The Supreme Court is currently showing that it will be issuing opinions and orders the week of June 29th. )  Of course, not all of these cases are significant from a political perspective.  What follows is what is currently known about the cases that followers of this site might find significant.