The Supreme Court has released six more opinions this week, bringing the total number of decided cases to thirty-eight. With twenty-three cases still pending, it remains to be seen if the Court will be able to complete its work before the end of June.
Similar to two weeks ago, the pace of decision-making this term matches that of last year but lags behind previous years. While there are nine potential opinion days left in June (excluding the Juneteenth holiday), the Court has announced that it will not issue any more opinions until June 20. This delay may result in opinions being released in the first week of July, which would be uncommon but not unprecedented.
Despite a high level of agreement among the justices in the judgments of 25 out of 38 cases so far, divisions are starting to emerge as more challenging cases are being decided. While there have been nine 6-3 decisions, only four have followed traditional ideological lines, with just two cases decided by a 5-4 vote.
As for individual opinion authorship, the breakdown is as follows:
- Sotomayor: 7
- Thomas: 6
- Alito: 4
- Kagan: 4
- Kavanaugh: 4
- Jackson: 4
- Barrett: 3
- Gorsuch: 2
- CJ Roberts: 2
There have been two per curiam opinions, and some cases are likely to be combined into a single opinion, such as the two Chevron cases, Relentless, and Loper-Bright.
Looking ahead, conservative justices are expected to write the majority of the remaining opinions. Despite representing one-third of the Court, liberal justices have authored 40% of the majority opinions so far. It is anticipated that liberal justices will write only a few more of the remaining opinions.
Speculatively, it is predicted that Chief Justice Roberts will have several major decisions, potentially including Rahimi, Relentless (the Chevron case), Moore, and the Trump immunity decision. Justice Gorsuch may author SEC v. Jarkesy, Murthy, and Fischer, while Kavanaugh could take on Ohio v. EPA. The outcome of NetChoice is uncertain, but it is expected to result in a fragmented ruling.
These predictions are speculative and should be taken with caution. The accuracy of these forecasts will be known in due course.
