[Persevero]

I hardly dare hope.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

...Hence all this impeachment talk.

[NewJerseyJoe]

P4L

[Red Badger]

c) make libs heads explode.

I like that part...................

[JonPreston]

There's also the sudden talk of impeaching Justice Thomas

HERE

[ProtectOurFreedom]

That would seem to explain this news posted yesterday...

Democrats To Explore Impeachment Options For Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

Political Insider
April 27, 2022
RUSTY WEISS

Impeachment-happy Democrats are expected to hold a hearing to explore the possibility of impeachment for Supreme Court justices in the wake of controversial messages surfacing from the wife of conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.

[Sans-Culotte]

[PghBaldy]

I normally take things like this with a large grain of salt, but this is nonetheless very interesting... Thank you for posting this.

[PghBaldy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson_Women%27s_Health_Organization

[70times7]

... c) make libs heads explode

Do we really want the entirety of America, in varying degrees, to look like the average San Francisco street, but with bodies?!?

[DSH]

One doesn't have to be any sort of Supreme Court "Zen master" to come up with an analysis of this nature. Appellate practitioners do this as a matter of course.

Here's the idea. The Court hears cases by monthly "sittings." Typically, the Court seeks to hear no more than nine cases at a given sitting, give or take a case. For instance, during the current Term, the Court scheduled nine cases to be heard in the October sitting; 10 cases in the November sitting (here, one petition has already been dismissed as "improvidently granted," and so only nine cases were ultimately argued); nine cases in the December sitting; 10 cases in the January sitting; seven cases in the February sitting; eight cases in the March sitting; and 10 cases in the April (i.e., final) sitting.

Following on to this, the Court then tries to distribute the workload evening among the nine Justices. That is to say, ideally, when the Court heard nine cases during a given sitting, each of the nine Justices will write one majority opinion. Of course, when there are fewer than nine cases heard during a given sitting, that isn't possible. And when there are more than nine cases heard during a given sitting, at least one Justice will write more than one majority opinion. That's just a function of math.

Here, the Dobbs case was argued during the December sitting. Two of the nine cases argued in December have now been decided: Cummings, the opinion in which was issued today, per C.J. Roberts (as was noted), and Hughes, the opinion in which was issued back on January 24, per J. Sotomayor.

Does this necessarily indicate that Roberts is not writing Dobbs? No, not really. In a high-profile case like Dobbs, the Court's general practice of "distributing the workload" will, if necessary, give way to other, more significant "political" considerations.

For instance, if it were the case that, in Dobbs, there were, following Conference, five Justices siding with the petitioner -- i.e., Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett -- and those five Justices were looking to overturn Roe, Roberts might throw in with those five (even if he was not himself inclined to overturn Roe), just so that he could assign himself the opinion and write it as narrowly as he wished. That Roberts has already written Cummings by no means precludes such an outcome. It may suggest that Roberts isn't writing Dobbs, but, at this point, it would be going out on a limb to make such a definitive call at this point.

It is the case that, if Roberts did vote with the liberal minority in Dobbs, then Justice Thomas, as the senior Justice in the majority, would be at liberty to assign the majority opinion to himself. There is no guarantee, however, that Thomas would choose to do that. He might not wish to assign the case to Barrett, the Court's most junior member. On the other hand, there could be some internal Court politicking going on in which the call is made that it is best to assign any opinion overturning Roe to a female Justice.

In any case, insofar as there are as still six cases remaining from the December sitting yet to be decided in addition to Dobbs, it probably makes more sense to see who's writing the majority opinions in those other cases (assuming that decisions there are announced in advance of Dobbs, which seems likely) before speculating too much on who's writing Dobbs.

[Impy]

Off-topic, forgive me but do you guys remember Michael Luttig? Guy was talked up as “the next Scalia”.

How he’s writing propaganda pieces about Republicans “plotting to steal the 2024 election”. SMH.