Heller Watch

Smart people have said today is going to be the day.  I’m going to be a contrarian and suggest that they will put it off until later in the week.  Stay tuned for updates as The Court starts releasing opinions.

UPDATE: Not today folks.  Chief Justice Roberts, you are such a tease.  From SCOTUSBlog: “The only opinion remaining from the March sitting is Heller.   The only Justice without a majority opinion from that sitting is Justice Scalia.”

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7 thoughts on “Heller Watch”

  3. “The only Justice without a majority opinion from that sitting is Justice Scalia.”

    What does that mean exactly? I took it to mean that Scalia’s opinion was not in agreement with the majority opinion, but I’m not used to SCOTUSblog-speak so I guess I don’t understand.

  4. I don’t think it will be a Scalia opinion – unless its overwhelming (8-1, 9-0). Otherwise, he’s just too controversial and at odds on too many undercurrents to be able to hold together a majority.

    Now, it could be a Scalia opinion where a large number of other justices concur with the underlying opinion but lay out there own case and explain how they disagree with Scalia – thats actually very possible. . . but part of me thinks they will do this clean – get a very narrow opinion out that has an overwhelming number signing on to – make it a Roberts or a Kennedy opinion, or perhaps even float it out to Ginsberg to entice the left to stay on.

  5. I took it to mean that Scalia’s opinion was not in agreement with the majority opinion, but I’m not used to SCOTUSblog-speak so I guess I don’t understand.

    Every decision has at least one justice write a majority decision. Usually there are at least four Justices who agree with the majority but do not write a majority opinion, but in some cases there can be up to eight. These individuals are said to ‘sign on’ to the majority opinion.

  6. OK, gotcha. So it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t _have_ any opinions in concurrence with the majority; it just means that he hasn’t, so far, _written_ one of the majority opinions.

    Makes sense now, thx.

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