Reading the tea leaves is a great Supreme Court tradition, and in that spirit I've been thinking a bit about the Supreme Court's cert grants on the Iraq habeas cases on Friday taken together with last week's Boumediene argument. A few characteristics stand out. First, the Supreme Court seems really interested in hearing these habeas cases. Second, they're mostly from the D.C. Circuit. Third, Justice Kennedy's questions at the Boumediene argument were not particularly hostile to the government; they focused heavily on what steps the D.C. Circuit could take to ensure that the review of CSRT proceedings was adequate for habeas purposes.

  Putting these clues together, I wonder if the Court is going to start taking lots and lots of the D.C. Circuit's war-on-terror-related habeas cases. In passing the MCA/DTA, Congress and the Administration wanted to make sure these cases ended up in the D.C. Circuit rather than across the country (gotta keep'em away from Reinhardt, obviously). Meanwhile, the D.C. Circuit has been taking its time with these cases, and in some cases deciding them as if the Supreme Court wasn't just a few blocks away. The clues from the last week raise the possibility that the Supreme Court is planning on being more actively involved; perhaps one answer to the Court's low docket will be a whole lotta habeas cases over the next few years.

  This all just speculation, of course. And I don't think this suggests any particular outcome if/when the Court takes more cases. But still, those Friday grants were pretty interesting, and I wonder if there are more like it on the way.