Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Althouse

Legal Commentary

: Althouse

Tom Goldstein predicts the outcomes (and the authors) of the final 4 Supreme Court cases of this Term.

To be announced tomorrow morning:

1. Bilski v. Kappos:

The only Justice who has not issued a majority opinion from [the November] sitting is Justice Stevens, which makes him the very likely author. Justice Stevens tends to take a narrow view of patent rights...

I ultimately predict that the Bilski majority opinion will be authored by Justice Stevens and that the decision will be very significant in its narrowing of the scope of method patents.

2. Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board:

[N]either the Chief Justice nor Justice Kennedy has authored an opinion from [the December] sitting... [but] Chief is ... unlikely to leave himself without an opinion in a sitting.

If I?m right, that means that the PCAOB?s structure is likely to be invalidated as unconstitutional. At oral argument the Chief Justice asked no questions of counsel to the plaintiffs and was hostile to the defense of the statute....

3. McDonald v. City of Chicago:

[T]he only Justice not to write from [the February] sitting is Justice Alito....

I predict that Justice Alito will write the Court?s opinion in McDonald recognizing that the Second Amendment is incorporated [in the 14th Amendment and thus applicable to state and local government]....

4. Christian Legal Society v. Martinez:

Neither Justice Stevens nor Justice Ginsburg authored an opinion from [the April] sitting....

Though it is very difficult to tell, I think that the most likely outcome in these circumstances is that Justice Ginsburg will issue a majority opinion in favor of Hastings Law School on the relatively narrow basis that the plaintiffs stipulated that the school had a neutral ?all comers? policy that did not discriminate against this group but instead provided that all groups must accept all students

We shall see. It's a big Supreme Court day tomorrow. The Court's Term ends, with the retirement of Justice Stevens, and the hearings on the Kagan nomination begin.

Full post as published by Althouse on June 27, 2010 (boomark / email).