PROGRAMMING NOTE FOR THURSDAY, JUNE 20
(Posted June 19, 2019) Because tomorrow foreseeably may be a busy day, I thought I’d get a jump start on things by giving you an admin note on what I expect tomorrow.
If you’ve followed the Supreme Court of the United States, you know that that Court issues opinions in all cases argued during a given term, before recessing for the summer. That recess customarily begins at the end of June. This often results in a rush of opinions in the second half of the month.
This year is no outlier: Of the 69 appeals argued in this term, the court has yet to hand down rulings in 20 of them. And as you’ve seen, the end of June is next week. Normally the Court hands down opinions on Mondays, but when enough opinions remain, the justices add one or more opinion days. Tomorrow is one such.
I expect to see five published opinions tomorrow, though I don’t know which ones we’ll see. I then expect the Court to add two more opinion days next week – likely Wednesday and Thursday, so it can announce rulings in all of the remaining cases.
Meanwhile, on the correct side of the Potomac, tomorrow is a presumptive opinion day for the Supreme Court of Virginia. We could see zero opinions, or ten, or something in between. My best bet is something in between, and I seriously doubt we’ll get anything approaching ten. There’s plenty to choose from; five appeals remain undecided from the February Session, and most of the April Session appeals are still pending. It’s extremely unlikely that the court will hand down any rulings from the June session, just two weeks ago.
My readers know that I don’t often focus on SCOTUS rulings, unless they have a significant Virginia nexus, or unless they’re of particularly major significance. You can get analysis of that court in many places, though the best site is SCOTUSblog. If you want something approaching real-time news, you can follow their live blog; opinions start arriving at 10:00.
My focus is always first on the Supreme Court of Virginia. If that court announces rulings – they hit the website shortly after 9:00 – I’ll analyze those and post commentary as quickly as I can. If something comes down from One First Street that I feel I should cover, I’ll follow up on that after I finish the Virginia analysis.
