readery: The Justices may need time to adjust to Sotomayor

Although Roberts issued the first 2 opinions of the term the past two years, that hardly shows he’s an “early bird”, since those opinions were not ‘early’ for first opinions of the term. It may also suggest that Roberts has adopted a custom of authoring the first opinion as chief.

Finally, how did these comments become the proper arena for a “discussion” of the merits of Brown v. McDaniel??

I think Oren might have been referring to the deadlines you presumably give your students for their papers. It isn’t quite a fair comparison, as the judges aren’t asking for another day or two in June to make the last touches. :)

a strong tradition

Until Chief Justice Burger changed the then strong tradition, decisions were handed down on Mondays. So much for tradition (and so much more for overworked news services and the fact that important decisions sometimes did not get the publicity that they deserved).

troll_dc2: Isn’t there a tradition that the first opinion signed by a new justice be unanimous (and that sometimes a case is selected for argument just because it is certain to be unanimous)? (I don’t know whether it is supposed to be the first signed opinion of the Term.) Perhaps the Court is trying to get Citizens United, which technically is an OT2008 case, out of the way first.

I should have noted in my previous post that prior to the case being taken off calendar I had predicted to several colleagues that Brown v. McDaniel would be Justice Sotomayor’s maiden opinion, since it conflicted with an unpublished 2nd Circuit decision where then Judge Sotomayor and her colleagues disagreed with the theory Brown presented for the first time in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Actually, I do spend a great deal of time grading: I want to make sure that the grades I give are as accurate as possible given how important they are to students’ careers. Some professors would rather just grade quickly so they can go on vacation sooner and figure the inaccuracies will balance out in the end (and that students will never know it), and I don’t follow that.

spo: Well, the one slam dunk, McDaniel v. Brown, was taken off the argument calendar. The Court still hasnt done anything with it, which makes it likely another per curiam opinion is coming down the pike. The panel may get slammed even worse than the panel in Belmontes.

I agree. The Ninth Circuit found insufficient evidence to sustain the conviction, claiming to follow Jackson v. Virginia.

In his brief, Brown (the prisoner) disavowed that Jackson provided the correct standard, even though he had argued that standard in the courts below. The Warden’s Reply Brief noted this change in tactics. Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court took the case off calendar since no one was actually defending the Court of Appeals’ decision.

At least as of the time the case was taken off calendar, the Court had not decided whether to appoint new counsel to argue the Court of Appeals’ position or to issue an opinion without oral argument.

I should note that I am familiar with this case because I co-authored the Warden’s briefs.

troll_dc2: Isn’t there a tradition that the first opinion signed by a new justice be unanimous (and that sometimes a case is selected for argument just because it is certain to be unanimous)?

Never heard of that, and not supported by recent history (the first opinions released in OT06 and OT08 weren’t unanimous). If there’s a tendency for unanimous opinions to appear first, that’s because, obviously, there’s no need to wait for dissents or for different authors to have to change their opinions in response to each other.

EDIT: Whoops — misread your post. You were referring to opinions by a new Justice. My mistake.

I never quite understood the hurry to get opinions out. A Justice only writes about 8 or 9 majority opinions a year, and that number is generally fixed. The most important thing is for them to be as good as they possibly can be, not published as early as they can be. My 2 cents, anyway.

Hopefully you aren’t this indulgent with your students …