Archive for October 2, 2011

Tomor­row is Mon­day, Octo­ber 3, the first Mon­day in Octo­ber, and there­fore the open­ing of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) for the 2011–2012 ses­sion. The court’s cur­rent cal­en­dar was set in 1916 by an act of Congress.

First Mon­day in October

Gen­er­ally, First Mon­day pro­ceed­ings are largely cer­e­mo­nial. It’s not clear whether the court will memo­ri­al­ize Jill Clay­burgh, who was the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court (at least in the movies). Still, I will raise a toast to one of my favorite actresses.

One bomb­shell announce­ment over the past week was that the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion asked the Supreme Court to con­sider the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act (pejo­ra­tively referred to as “Oba­macare”) sooner rather than later. Clearly, the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion senses a win-​​win (or at the very least, a win-​​draw) oppor­tu­nity by forc­ing the issue and ask­ing the court to adju­di­cate PPACA and announce their deci­sion in the heat of the 2012 elec­tion sea­son (pre­sum­ably in June, at the last pos­si­ble moment, as it usu­ally does for big cases).

After the jump, we’ll run down a few of the most inter­est­ing cases that will cer­tainly be con­sid­ered by the court this term, and then pre­view some cases which might be con­sid­ered but have not been offi­cially added to the cal­en­dar (includ­ing PPACA). (more…)