Today is the First Monday in October, the official statutory beginning of the new Supreme Court Term. As you might expect, the reporters who cover the Supreme Court are offering lots of preview stories to tell us what we can expect in the Term ahead. (For those who don’t follow such things, the Supreme Court year runs from October to October, and each year is called a Term. To put things into English, today is something like the Supreme Court’s first day of school.)
The strange part about Term preview stories is how little the stories can tell you. The stories are well written and generally quite accurate, but the truth is that we just don’t know much about the new Term yet. We know the issues raised by the cases the Court has agreed to hear in the fall and early winter, but that’s about it. No one knows how the Court will decide these cases, and no one knows what cases the Court will decide to hear for the latter half of the Term. (The Court agrees to hear cases throughout the year, and has only filled up about half of its docket for the Term so far.)
On another note, it wouldn’t be the beginning of a Supreme Court Term without a New York Times editorial explaining to the Justices how they should do their jobs. Today’s editorial, The First Monday in October, begins by telling the Justices how they should rule in their major cases. The Times editors tell the Justices to uphold the guidelines, invalidate the death penalty for juveniles, and bar the use of segregated prisons. The editorial concludes by giving the Justices a homework assignment: given the possibility of another close election, the Times editors instruct, the Justices should “beg[i]n to think now about how they could do a job better this year if the presidential election once again ends up on their docket.”
Meanwhile, the Washington Post offers a lighter approach: their Federal Page offers a trivia quiz on Supreme Court law clerks. I missed questions #3 and #10.
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