The Week Ahead – November 14, 2016

The Supreme Court’s scheduled activity this week consists of orders from its November 10 conference, issued on Monday, November 14. The Court did not add any new cases to its docket. It did not act on a number of cases that had been relisted, suggesting that those cases are still under consideration, that the Court is considering a per curiam opinion, or that a justice is writing a dissent from the denial of certiorari.

In other Supreme Court news, speculation continues as to what a Supreme Court under a Trump Administration would look like. The Wall Street Journal suggested that the Court’s docket may well change, as President-Elect Trump will be filling Justice Scalia’s vacant seat, ridding the Court of its current deadlock due to the even liberal-conservative divide. Adam Liptak of the New York Times discussed Trump’s “final list” of potential SCOTUS appointees he released in September. Liptak notes, “Mr. Trump’s candidates represent a sharp break from current conservative justices, who all went to law school at Harvard or Yale and who all served on federal appeals courts in the Northeast or in California.” Jeffrey Rosen of Politico discusses how a Trump presidency is likely to reshape both the Supreme Court and the country. He explains that “Trump’s appointee might be more willing to enforce limits on congressional and presidential power than Scalia himself.” Finally, Richard Wolf of USA Today discusses the effect Trump may have on appeals courts, noting that while the Supreme Court hears about 75 cases each term, the appeals courts hear closer to 30,000.

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