Updating our “Petitions to Watch”

Before each Conference, we’ve posted a list of “Petitions to Watch,” which includes the paid cases that we think will be taken most seriously by the justices. In November, we posted an earlier entry with an update on how they had fared; this new post is a mid-Term update.

This Term, including cases considered during the Long Conference of September 25, the Court has now granted 44 cases (5 of these are sets of two consolidated petitions). Of these:

-8 have been pauper cases, which we do not evaluate for our “Petitions to Watch” feature (note that so far 18% of grants have been from pauper cases).

-Of the 36 paid grants, 29 have been on our list (81%).

-If we do not include the Long Conference, which is quite difficult to predict given the number of cases the Court considers, 21 of the 25 paid cases that have been granted were on our list.

-7 requests have been made for the views of the Solicitor General (including one set of 2 consolidated cases). 6 of these cases have been on our lists.

Looking at it from the other direction, we have picked out 117 cases to feature thus far.

-Of these, 31 (26%) have been granted and placed on the docket (2 were consolidated for argument).

-3 were granted and summarily vacated.

-7 have been sent to the Solicitor General (2 were consolidated before the invitation to the SG).

-6 are likely being held pending the outcome of other granted cases. These are 05-1439 and 06-705, likely pending Travelers v. PG&E (05-1429); 06-82 pending the Safeco and Geico insurance cases (06-84 and 06-100); 06-306, likely pending BCI Coca-Cola v. EEOC (06-341), and 06-726 and 05-1323 pending US v. Atlantic Research (06-562).

-3 have not been acted upon and likely will be relisted (Skoros v. New York, 06-271, Knowles v. Mirzayance, 06-396, Lance v. Dennis, 06-641).

Thus, not counting the 3 cases currently awaiting action, 47 of the 114 cases we selected (43%) have either been granted and docketed, granted and summarily vacated, sent to the SG, or held pending the outcome of other cases. 67 have been denied (57%).

Our “Petitions to Watch” pages have all been updated to reflect the status of each case listed, and can be found after the jump.

9/25
10/6 and 10/13
10/27
11/3
11/9
11/21
12/1
12/7
1/5
1/12
1/19