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Seeking SCOTUS speculations during the Justices holiday break

By Douglas A. Berman

Last year around this time, wehad the Supreme Court's then-fresh opinion in Gall and Kimbrough to keep us warm through long winter nights.  This year, though we have lots of new USSC data to unpack, the Justices failed to beat the holiday rush in resolving any of its sentencing sleeper cases from the Fall.  Intriguingly, the Court managed to issue only two signed opinions before taking its holiday break this year.  As detailed here, the Justices did get out four per curiam opinion and the two cases with signed opinions involved a divided court.  But with only Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Stevens having authored signed opinions for the Court, it is difficult to even effectively speculate who might be writing the opinions in Oregon v. Ice, which deals with Blakely's applicability to consecutive sentencing determinations, and United States v...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on December 19, 2008 (boomark / email).