The Supreme Court returns to the bench on Wednesday to issue opinions in argued cases. With roughly 13 opinions left to release, it’s finally possible to start reading some tea leaves – that is, to make some predictions about which justices might be the authors of the remaining decisions.
In the final week of June, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch have still only authored three opinions each. And they each have just one opinion in total from the court’s October and November argument sessions. This suggests that they are writing for the court in SEC v. Jarkesy and Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, the two decisions still remaining from the court’s December argument session, although there is no way to know who has which opinion.
The only cases remaining from the court’s January argument session are the cases asking the justices to overturn their 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council – Relentless v. Department of Commerce and Loper-Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The cases were argued separately, because Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is recused from Loper-Bright, but the court could opt to dispose of them in one opinion, as it did in the affirmative action cases last year. Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh have not yet written for the January session, but the author seems more likely to be Roberts, who has two fewer opinions so far than Kavanaugh.
There could be as many as four decisions left from the court’s February argument session: Corner Post v. Federal Reserve Bank, Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency, and the two challenges to Florida and Texas laws that seek to regulate large social-media companies. With 11 cases in the session (one of which, Trump v. Anderson, has already been resolved with an unsigned opinion), it’s harder to game out the possible authors, but Gorsuch and Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett do not yet have opinions from the session.
Only one case remains from the court’s March argument session: Murthy v. Missouri, the social-media “jawboning” case. Barrett and Alito have not yet written in March.
There are still five cases left from the April argument session. With 10 arguments that session, someone will have to write more than once, making it difficult to make predictions at this stage.
