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How exactly do transitions impact the SCOTUS docket and cert grant decisions?

By Douglas A. Berman

As regular readers know based on various posts on docket dynamics and a recent article, I believe that how the Supreme Court sets its docket and decides what to decide is often more important than just what it actually decides.  This is perhaps especially true in the criminal justice arena, where the Court receives many thousands of (paid and unpaid) petitions from criminal defendants raising a broad array of criminal justice issues in a broad array of factual and legal setting.  Consequently, as we thinking about the on-going transition from Justice Souter to (in all likelihood) Justice Sotomayor, I have been thinking lately about how transitions impact the SCOTUS docket and cert grant decisions. For starters, I have to state my strong personal belief that the presence of a new Chief Justice and Justice Alito has so far had a very positive impact on the Supreme Court's criminal law docket...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 01, 2009 (boomark / email).