What’s Going On at the Supreme Court?

By Carolyn Shapiro [via Oyez/ISCOTUSnow]

Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued decisions in four cases.* All but one were unanimous as to result, and that one, City of Arlington v. FCC, though important in administrative law, is not a case most members of the public are likely to be following. This may lead some people to wonder what the Supreme Court is doing and when they will issue decisions in the big cases from this Term — the gay marriage cases (Perry and Windsor), the affirmative action case (Fisher), and the Voting Rights Act case (Shelby County), to name a few.

The short answer is that the dispositions of these cases will almost certainly be announced before the end of June, when the Court goes into summer recess. I say “almost certainly” because there is at least one other, very remote, possibility: Occasionally a case is held over for reargument in the fall. This happened with Citizens United.

At this time of year, the Court generally announces (or “hands down”) opinions on Mondays (next week it will be Tuesday due to Memorial Day), and it sometimes adds an additional hand-down days, usually Thursdays, towards the end of the Term. But the Court never announces ahead of time what opinions it will be issuing on a particular hand-down day. So between now and the end of June, every hand-down day has the potential to be a biggie.

* Read Oyez’s overviews of the cases decided this week:
– Sebelius v. Cloer
– Metrish v. Lancaster
– PPL Corporation v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue
– City of Arlington, TX v. FCC