The Supreme Court on Tuesday released the argument calendar for the December session, which actually begins on Monday, Nov. 29.  It will continue through Wednesday, Dec. 8.  Arguments will be held in the mornings only, starting each day at 10 a.m. and running to noon with one hour of argument per case.  The issues raised in each case are indicated in the listing below.  Also shown are the cases in which new Justice Elena Kagan will not be participating.

Monday, Nov. 29:

Wall v. Kohli (09-868) — State court’s reduction of a criminal sentence as a reason to suspend the one-year federal habeas filing deadline.

Walker v. Martin (09-996) — State duty to have clear deadlines for inmate challenges to conviction or sentence.

Tuesday, Nov. 30:

Schwarzenegger v. Plata (09-1233) — Federal court power to order release of state prison inmates; also, jurisdiction issue.

CIGNA Corp. v. Amara (09-804) — Scope of company’s duty to provide workers with full information about a new pension plan and their benefits.

Wednesday, Dec. 1:

Milner v. Department of Navy (09-1163) — Right of access to information about government storage of explosive munitions that may pose a risk to neighboring population.

Virginia Office v. Stewart (09-529) — Constitutionality of one state agency suing another to enforce a federal law.

Monday, Dec. 6:

Henderson v. Shinseki (09-1036) — Time limit for veterans to seek court review of government denial of disability benefits claim.  (Justice Kagan recused.)

Pepper v. United States (09-6822) — Right to reduction of federal criminal sentence for rehabilitation efforts after initial sentencing. (Justice Kagan recused.)

Tuesday, Dec. 7:

Janus Capital Group v. First Derivative Traders (09-525) — Securities fraud liability of investment adviser to a mutual fund for the fund’s misleading statements about trading practices.

Thompson v. North American Stainless (09-291) — Retaliation against the relative or associate of a worker as a way to punish the worker for challenging discrimination in the workplace.

Wednesday, Dec. 8:

Chase Bank USA v. McCoy (09-329) — Banks’ duty to notify credit card holders of interest rate increase for default.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting (09-115) — States’ authority to pass their own laws to punish employers for hiring illegal alien workers; question of preemption.

This round-up includes highlights of coverage from Wednesday, September 1 through today.  Going forward, we will continue to post daily round-ups on the redesigned SCOTUSblog.

Over the past several days, a number of news sources have reported on the fall-out from last Term’s decisions in the trio of cases involving the federal “honest services” law.  The Washington Post reports that a request by former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling to be released on bail while appealing his fraud conviction has been denied; Bloomberg also has coverage.  Meanwhile, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and JURIST all report that former Illinois Governor George Ryan, who was convicted on corruption charges in 2006 has filed a motion seeking to have his sentence vacated in light of the Skilling decision.  Similarly, former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and former HealthSouth chief Richard Scrushy have relied on Skilling to seek the dismissal of charges against them, the Houston Chronicle reports.

In an article in the New York Times this week, Adam Liptak discusses the Justices’ hiring practices, and in particular Justice Thomas’s preference for clerks from non-Ivy-League schools.   In another article, Liptak examines the extent to which the Justices’ hiring practices have become politically polarized; in a separate graphic, the Times breaks down this trend, categorizing recent clerks based on the political party of the president who nominated them.

Briefly:

• At UPI, Michael Kirkland reports on the recent cert. petition filed by the retail giant Wal-Mart to stop a class-action suit against it that could “turn out to be the largest class-action suit in U.S. history.”
• At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick discusses the National Rifle Association’s increased participation in the debate over Supreme Court nominees in recent years.
• In this month’s issue of the ABA Journal, Liane J. Jackson examines what she characterizes as the erosion of the Court’s landmark decision in Miranda v. Arizona in recent years.
• At the BLT, Tony Mauro reports that Justice Kagan has indicated that she will not participate in a twelfth case:  Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, which is scheduled for argument in October.
• At Law.com, Tony Mauro and Carrie Levine report that the video game industry has been soliciting the support of state attorneys general in Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, a case challenging restrictions on the sale of violent video games to minors.
• At the WSJ Law Blog, Ashby Jones details the facts in Snyder v. Phelps, scheduled for oral argument in October, and recaps Joan Biskupic’s recent preview of the case.
• The New York Times has an article on the impact of the Court’s recent McDonald v. Chicago ruling on transit agency advertising policies, many of which prohibit the promotion of firearms.
• Finally, at the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr highlights comments made recently by Justice Kennedy on the role of the blogosphere in his and his clerks’ thinking about pending cases.

Labor Day weekend is now but a memory, which means that the beginning of October Term 2010 (whose name derives from its beginning, as dictated by statute, on the first Monday of October) is right around the corner.  Supreme Court watchers are rubbing their hands together with anticipation.  So what will happen in the days leading up to October 4?  A few details:

First, the Justices will be returning from their summers far and wide.  For example, the Chief Justice spent time this summer in Maine and in Australia, while Justice Kennedy followed his long-time tradition of teaching law students in Salzburg, Austria.  It is common for the Justices to teach in foreign countries, give speeches, and take some vacation time; after all, their schedules are a good deal less flexible from October until the end of June.  Of course, Justice Kagan has been hard at work at the Court since her swearing in on August 7, learning the ropes and catching up on the tasks that the other Justices had the whole summer to complete.

Speaking of Justice Kagan, her formal investiture will take place on October 1 with a special ceremony in the Supreme Court’s courtroom.  At the investiture, she will have the opportunity to sit in the chair once occupied by Chief Justice John Marshall, and afterwards she will walk down the front steps of the Court with Chief Justice Roberts – a terrific photo op.

On September 27, the Justices will hold their long Conference.  The term “Conference” can be used to describe both a private meeting of the Justices and the Justices as a group.  At the former kind of Conference, no one else is present, and the junior Justice (now Justice Kagan) sits near the door and is responsible for tasks such as passing notes in and out, answering the door, and getting coffee.

At the long Conference, the Justices must discuss all of the cert. petitions – as many as two thousand – that came in over the summer.  You probably remember from Plain English posts last Term that a petition for certiorari is a formal request to have the Court review the decision of some lower court – usually either the federal courts of appeals or state supreme courts.  The thirty-six or so law clerks have spent the summer reviewing the cert. petitions and writing memos recommending whether the Court should grant cert. (that is, review the case on the merits) or deny cert. (decline to hear the case).  Most recommendations will be to deny, usually for one or more of the following reasons:  the issue is not a pressing one, the case does not present a good “vehicle” for deciding the case (meaning that the facts aren’t ideal for judicial decision-making), or the Court has already decided a similar case in the past.

But some cases will warrant a “grant” recommendation, and the Court will pay special attention to these (although the clerks’ recommendations are certainly not dispositive, they become pretty good at sifting through the petitions for the ones that deserve a second look by the Conference).  During their long September 27 meeting, the Justices will discuss each case one by one, then vote on whether to hear it.  According to the Rule of Four, four Justices must vote to grant cert., or the petition is denied.

In the cases in which the Justices grant cert., briefing and oral argument schedules will follow quickly.  The petitioner (the party seeking the Court’s review) has only forty-five days to file a brief of approximately sixty pages, arguing the merits of the case); the respondent (the party who won in the court below) has only thirty days to respond.   At some point after all of the briefs are filed, the parties will argue their cases in front of the nine Justices.

After the long Conference, the Term will begin promptly at 10:00 a.m. on October 4.  The Chief Justice will likely welcome Justice Kagan and then move right along to the first oral arguments.  And the October docket is full of some important and interesting cases, including a case about employee privacy, a case about the right to counsel, and a case about the First Amendment right to express one’s views, even at a funeral.

Looking forward to a fascinating Term!

Citizens United v. FEC, one of the most high-profile decisions of the 2009 Term, struck down limits on corporate campaign spending (and, by implications, limits on union spending as well). The decision has already been the subject of numerous academic articles attempting to gauge its likely effect on campaign finance regulation and the potential for political corruption.

Two articles forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review propose methods for countering the political corruption that some fear will result from corporate contributions. Samuel Issacharoff suggests that reforms designed to increase campaign contributions by non-corporate donors would help to diminish corporate influence. He also favors prohibiting such spending by entities uniquely capable of distorting government policy, such as government contractors. In a separate article, co-authors Lucian Bebchuk and Robert Jackson contend that decisions regarding political spending differ from ordinary business decisions, and thus they propose new rules to align corporate political speech with shareholder interests.

In a forthcoming article in the Michigan Law Review, Rick Hasen predicts that the Court will find it difficult to apply the decision’s sweeping statements regarding the First Amendment and campaign contributions consistently in future cases. For example, the majority’s rationale suggests that there can be no limits on campaign contributions by foreign nationals—a position that he doubts the Court will be able to sustain in the face of hostile political and public reaction. Hasen thus concludes that Citizens United will exacerbate existing doctrinal incoherence in this area of the law as the Court is forced to make exceptions to its broad pronouncements.

Finally, Deborah Hellman’s article in the Minnesota Law Review challenges the assumption that contributing money to campaigns constitutes speech protected by the First Amendment. Hellman concedes that money facilitates speech, but she points out that money facilitates the exercise of many constitutional rights and yet spending in furtherance of other rights is not always constitutionally protected. As Hellman acknowledges, her article questions an assumption that the Court now takes as a given, and that it is unlikely to abandon in the near future.

The “Petition of the day” posts feature petitions that are likely to appear on our “Petitions to watch” list when they are scheduled for consideration by the Justices. “Petitions of the day” are those that Tom has identified as raising one or more questions that has a reasonable chance of being granted in an appropriate case. We generally do not attempt to evaluate whether the case presents an appropriate vehicle to decide the question, which is a critical consideration in determining whether certiorari will be granted.

The petition of the day is: 

Title: Depee v. Mahach-Watkins
Docket: 10-151
Issue(s): Whether, when a civil rights plaintiff seeks substantial money damages but receives only nominal damages, a court may award attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988, notwithstanding the failure of the litigation to achieve a significant public benefit such as declaratory, injunctive, or class relief.

• Opinion below (9th Circuit)
• Petition for certiorari

The Week of September 6, 2010

In this section of SCOTUSblog, we will provide information on the cases argued and decided during the current week, as well as the petitions that are up for consideration and granted that week.  But for the next three weeks, no cases will be  argued or decided, and no petitions will be considered, because the Court is in recess.

The next significant action of the Justices will be to meet in Conference to consider pending cert. petitions on Monday, September 27.  This is the so-called “Long” or “Summer” Conference.  We will publish our “Petitions to Watch” list for that Conference roughly ten days ahead of time.

The orders granting certiorari from that Conference likely will be issued at 10 a.m. (all times are Eastern) on Wednesday, September 29.  Orders denying certiorari will be released at 10 a.m. on Monday, October 4.

Welcome to the new SCOTUSblog.  The site is radically redesigned, and among other things it integrates the material that previously was posted on SCOTUSwiki, which will soon cease to operate.

The design is a new approach not only for us, but also – to some extent, we think – for the blogosphere more broadly.  Our goal is to put at your fingertips more of the information you use from the blog regularly.  In particular, our emphasis continues to shift from a focus on news of the moment to also serving as an archival resource regarding all of the merits cases and the serious cert. petitions.

We have also created a simpler “mobile” version of the blog, which you should be able to select if you visit the site using a smartphone.

Although the new design is the work of several people on our team, Harvard 2L Matt Scarola deserves much of the credit for the design and all of the credit for the implementation.  Moving content from the old site and SCOTUSwiki to the new one has been a team effort as well, but Adam Schlossman, Erin Miller, and especially Anna Christensen deserve particular credit.

This post – which we’ll keep available in the sidebar – explains how to take full advantage of the updated design.  (Note that the first time you load the new blog, it may be slow – we download a fair amount of the formatting and related information to your computer a single time, so that it does not have to be reloaded again later.)

Home Page

The previous version of SCOTUSblog had two principal sections: (1) Blog Posts; and (2) the Sidebar.

The new blog adds many more sections.  The central area of the Home Page now has seven sections, listed here from top to bottom: (1) Blog Posts (which obviously existed on the old blog, but has been modified); (2) This Week at the Court; (3) a Calendar (which used to exist on the Sidebar, but has been expanded); (4) Merits Cases; (5) Petitions We’re Watching; (6) Statistics; and (7) Posts by Category (which is a big section that expands only when you click the link).

There is a new Navigation Bar at the top.  The Sidebar is substantially changed as well.  Details about both appear below.

In addition, we can turn on and off several additional features: (1) Live Blogs, and (2) three Banners: (a) Breaking News; (b) Editor’s Note (which we used to highlight this post); and (c) Special Features (which we will use to highlight features such as our coverage of the Kagan nomination and hearings and our tributes to Justice Stevens).  All of those new features will appear above the Blog Posts, with the exception of the Special Features Banner, which appears below This Week at the Court and the Calendar.

Here is a more detailed explanation of each of the sections:

Blog Posts:  This is where our traditional blog content appears.  It has two subsections.

a) Featured highlights one to three noteworthy posts, which will cycle automatically (unless you select a post number from the top right).  Click on the headline to read the full post.  Posts that we believe are particularly noteworthy may appear here for multiple days, so that you don’t miss them if you don’t visit the blog every day.

b) Latest is, in a sense, what’s left of the old SCOTUSblog.  This section summarizes our most recent posts in classic blog style (reverse chronological order), although it omits Featured posts.  You can also select summaries of the fifth through eighth (or older) posts.  Click any headline to see the full post.  We also now indicate how old a post is.

This Week at the Court:  This section replaces what used to appear as a recurring post.  It links to all the cases that will be argued during the week, as well as those that have been decided and granted, and the notable petitions that will be considered.

Calendar:  It’s self-explanatory.  Hover over a date to see the events.  You can also select a larger calendar that lets you seem more detail and review other months.  A new feature allows you to email us events you would like to see included.

Merits Cases: This section identifies the cases that will be argued next, in tabular form.  But only a few cases appear on the Home Page, so most often, you will want to click “All Merits Cases,” which will show you the full table.  From there, you can sort the document (if you like) and select a particular case.  Each case now has its own page, with links to all our coverage, the briefs, the docket, etc.  The case page is essentially an improved version of the page that previously appeared in SCOTUSwiki.

Petitions We’re Watching: This is a new feature.  On the Home Page, this section identifies some of the petitions that will next be considered by the Court.  But again, you are likely to want to select “All Petitions We’re Watching,” which links to a sortable table of all the pending notable petitions.  The table in turn links to a page for each petition that includes the available filings for each petition.

Statistics: This new feature substantially augments our previous practice of producing “StatPacks” towards the end of the Term.  On the Home Page we now present a collection of the most important statistics, updated throughout the Term.  We will also continue to produce StatPacks, however.

Show Posts Sorted by Category: Selecting this link opens a new separate section that lists our posts divided into roughly ten categories – for example, Detainee Litigation.  Summaries of the three most recent posts in each category are displayed.  You can also subscribe to an individual category using RSS.  Our Twitter feed appears here as well.

Navigation Bar and Sidebar

Navigation Bar:  This feature – which appears at the top of every page – allows you to jump to particular kinds of content.  (Place your mouse over a menu item with a “»” to reveal a dropdown menu.)

Most of the headings are self-explanatory.  Scroll View takes you to the mobile version of SCOTUSblog, which displays our most recent posts in the traditional scroll, blog format.  Select this option if you prefer to look at the posts in a much simpler, reverse chronological format.

Sidebar

The Sidebar has a variety of new and expanded features.

Subscribe or Follow:  You can get access to our content through RSS, a daily email, Twitter, or on Facebook.  The RSS option allows you to select all of our posts, or only certain categories.

Search Archives:  Our search feature has the usual word search and the ability to select posts from a particular month or category.  For the first time, it now also lets you go straight to specific cases, using Case Files. You can select the Case Page for any case the Court will consider this Term; you can also select another Term from Term Archives to get access to the pages from that Term’s cases.

Blogroll:  Our blogroll now expands, accordion-style.

Masthead: This section now links to an archive of that person’s posts, as well as (1) an option to subscribe to an RSS feed of the author’s posts; (2) biographical data; and (3) the author’s email address.

Educational Resources:  This section now includes the Justices’ biographies, a glossary of terms, and a new guide to Supreme Court procedure.  We hope to add more materials in the future.

Administration:  This section carries over from the old blog, except that we have a new Corrections section.  Any post that we correct substantively will be linked here.

Sample Post

To get a sense of the format for blog posts, this one is illustrative.  You are currently reading a post entitled “Navigating the new SCOTUSblog.” Information about the post is available above the title, including by whom it was written and when it was posted.  If one has been provided, a summary of the post appears directly below the title.

A table of four rows is at the bottom of this post. You can find posts categorized or tagged similarly to this one by clicking on a link in either the Categories or Tags row.

Conclusion

We hope you enjoy the functionality we have added to SCOTUSblog. If something is not working or could be improved, please email webdev@scotusblog.com to let us know. Regardless, after you have experimented with the new design, please help us out by taking just a few minutes to fill out a brief survey to share your reaction. We appreciate your feedback, and we hope to continue improving the blog based on your ideas and opinions.

Click here to fill out the five-question survey.

You are now using the new SCOTUSblog, which internally we call “SCOTUSblog 4.0.”  The version number reflects that it is the third complete overhaul of the site since we launched the original version as a very simple blogger.com site nearly eight years ago.

The previous revisions have been stylistic and technological: they affected how you saw the blog and added some features (such as a calendar).  In addition, over time, we covered more of the cases at the Court; now we cover them all.  But throughout, the blog retained its essential character:  SCOTUSblog presented a series of chronological posts on issues closely related to the Court.

The shift to version 4.0 is different.  Not only is it much more significant in scale (it uses a huge array of new technology and the blog looks radically different), but it also is quite different in our approach to the nature of the blog and to the substance of what we write.  This post explains why and how.

In blogging, form traditionally drives function, rather than the reverse – which would make more sense.  The platform’s greatness is that you can publish, at almost no cost and with little effort, your thoughts to the world.  Blogging thus rests on a principle of expressive egalitarianism – all posts from all people at any moment are created equal.  Value is assigned exclusively by readers, who pass links to friends and perhaps discuss posts on their own blogs.

That egalitarian principle carries over to blogs’ visual structure:  posts uniformly appear in reverse chronological order.  Although one post might be brilliant, and the next four trivial or idiotic, that doesn’t matter:  each is given equal attention (except perhaps to the limited extent that one might receive more space on the home page before the reader must click on a “jump” link to read the rest).  Unlike newspapers, which have organizing principles that give new articles prominence based on their significance (for example, above the fold to the right), a blog gives each new post equal prominence on the “scroll,” to be pushed down by the next item that happens to be published, even if that happens only seconds later.

Thus, on SCOTUSblog 3.0, you might have seen an extremely detailed analysis of the Term or the current state of litigation regarding the Guantanamo detainees.  But those posts might immediately have lost their prominence if by happenstance we noted a newly filed cert. petition.  We adopted systems to try and keep important pieces at the “top” of the blog for a few hours – and in rare cases we would even “bump” posts by putting them back at the top – but inevitably other posts have to go up; when they do, they assume visual prominence.

There is, moreover, significant pressure to get new posts up, thereby diluting great content.  As noted, we have a commitment to comprehensively covering the Court, including cases that few people care about.  More broadly, blogs sustain and increase their readership by providing new content.  If a site does not have new material daily, then readers will not visit each day, and they may in fact fall out of the pattern of visiting at all.  Inevitably, then, the most valuable content is treated equally with everything else on the blog, all of which quickly loses its prominence.

So structured at their foundation, blogs convey to readers the impression that value should be based significantly on newness.  Most blogs attach a date- and time-stamp to each post.  There is an au courant feel that, however important a thought was when first published on the blog, a few hours later it is stale and potentially superseded.  Occasionally, a post’s relevance will be sustained for a few days or even weeks by discussion on other sites (or by heavy exchanges in comments on sites like Volokh that allow them), but that is the exception which proves the rule that timeliness is perceived to matter most.

Ironically, blogging (in its traditional form) is a bad platform for SCOTUSblog.  The value of our content – in the sense of what it adds to public understanding and debate – can vary radically from post to post; all our posts certainly are not created equal.

In addition, many of our posts and the documents that we republish also have significant research and archival value:  if you want to retrieve a brief or review our analysis of a ruling, it does not really matter when those posts happened to be published.  Similarly, if you want to know what is happening at the Court this week, it should not matter whether you coincidentally visit the blog soon after we publish a “This Week At The Court Post,” which you otherwise might miss.  And if we publish a write-up of a case, it may be more relevant on the argument day, which could be weeks later.

We first tried to overcome the constraints of the blogging model by creating an entirely new site:  SCOTUSwiki.  It might more accurately have been called SCOTUSbase – i.e., a database of our posts and materials.  But the name reflected the fact that we gave some thought to opening the site either to the public à la Wikipedia (and experimented with three of the case pages) or to a set of experts (another experiment), and we built the site on wiki software.  The importance of that archival function is reflected in the fact that  so that by the end of last Term one-quarter of our hits were on the wiki.

Two developments made it possible for us to fully implement our vision for the blog on a new version of SCOTUSblog itself, rather than splitting between two sites that were integrated only indirectly.  First, our blogging platform – WordPress – evolved, including through the development of many free or inexpensive themes and plug-ins.  Second, we were joined this summer by Matt Scarola (now a Harvard 2L) who, in addition to being great in legal thinking and writing, is incredibly good at implementing that technology.  All of the programming for the new site was either created or customized by Matt.

A great deal of thought and effort – thousands of hours and hundreds of revisions – has gone into the new design.  Much of it was driven by the results of our reader surveys.  Matt patiently accepted massive lists of changes from me (one had roughly a hundred, many had thirty or more), some of which reversed changes that I had requested only the day before. Since the first “draft” of version 4.0, I expect there have been at least 500 changes — 1000 might be a better estimate.  The tiny Court icon that appears on browser tabs went through ten versions.  We debated moving words individual dot points to the right or left.  And so on.

The upshot of all this work is that SCOTUSblog 4.0 works much better for us than the classic blog “scroll.”  We believe that you can now use the site as a comprehensive source for information about what’s going on at the Court.

To really understand the new SCOTUSblog conceptually, and to make the most of it, it is easiest to contrast a news ticker (which corresponds to the traditional model of a blog) with a well-indexed book filled with hundreds of constantly updated individual pages (which corresponds to SCOTUSblog 4.0).  On the new blog, every case has its own page; all of these pages collectively make up the blog.  All of our separate posts about that case, as well as all the material we collect (such as briefs and commentary by others), are added to the page.  As we update this virtual “book” with new posts — such as an oral argument preview or opinion analysis — each update appears as a blog post; but fundamentally the organizing principle is each case’s page.

We also have numerous indices that let you access all of the pages — for example, we have sortable lists of all the merits cases for the term and all the petitions we’re watching; each author’s posts are indexed; and you can see indices organized by topic (such as detainee litigation or “Plain English” posts).

In terms of how we present this information, we continue to note our most recent posts in the Latest section.  But a new Featured Posts section maintains the prominence of our most important work.  The Archives allow readers to retrieve everything that we have written, and all the materials we have collected, on every case.  There are sortable and searchable tables of all the Merits Cases and Petitions We’re Watching, as well as regularly updated Statistics.  A separate section tells you everything that is going on This Week at the Court.  If you are interested in only a particular kind of post – for example, Detainee Litigation or Plain English – you can find it much more easily using either our Categories or a separate RSS Feed.

We have also tried to address the issue of the blog becoming unavailable at times of peak usage – for example, on the last day of the Term when we have incoming links from sites like Drudge Report.  The blog shut down like that only once last Term – a big improvement over previous years – and hopefully the technology and procedures that we have put in place mean that it will not happen at all any more.

Those major changes are in addition to dozens of other, smaller ones.  We now have a mobile site for smartphones.  The Calendar is now more comprehensive and accessible.  So is the Blogroll.  Our RSS feeds are much more flexible.  You will see more photos and other images. We note all our corrections and make them available through a single link on the sidebar. We have systematized our coverage of new petitions through a new Petition of the Day feature.

All of the discussion above has been about form, and its influence on substance.  But even the most beautiful website in the world will have no readers if the content isn’t good.  In the past, our most significant developments on the content side have been the addition of reporter Lyle Denniston and Amy taking on the role of editing every piece.  Other important developments were the creation of teams of students doing daily Round-ups, the addition of the Plain English (by Lisa McElroy) and Academic Round-up (now by Amanda Frost) features, and posts by Marty Lederman (who left the blog when he went into the government).  Based on our existing content, we were honored to be the first blog to receive the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award.

Also important was our adoption of a series of policies that implement our commitment to the highest legal and journalistic ethical standards.  We have always been concerned about the prospect that others would try to use the blog to influence the Court, and that our own writing could do so inadvertently.  Initially, we simply imposed a disclosure requirement and permitted only Lyle to make the judgment whether to write a feature post about a cert. petition. But as the seeming influence of the blog grew, we went further and eliminated any instance in which we were highlighting our own cases and prohibited lawyers from writing about cases in which their firms were involved, unless absolutely unavoidable.

Now with SCOTUSblog 4.0, we are making several more significant content-related improvements.  In recent years, our students at Stanford and at Harvard, as well as summer associates at my firm, Akin Gump, have written up a majority of the cases, including virtually all the lower-profile decisions.  They work very hard and do a tremendous job.  But because they are not experts, they have little context or experience to use in making judgments and predictions.  Now, for a substantial number of cases, we have decided to shift in the direction of using more experienced writers.  The American Bar Association issues a print publication called “Preview,” in which (generally) expert academics write up each of the cases that will be argued.  Starting this Term, half of those previews will appear on SCOTUSblog.  We hope and expect that many of the expert authors of those pieces will cover the oral argument and decision for us as well.

In addition, we have expanded our relationships with other bloggers as we try to cement SCOTUSblog’s role as a hub for analysis and commentary relating to the Court.  For example, Orin Kerr has posted here about Fourth Amendment cases.  Starting this Term, we will have contributions from other well-known commentators (such as Jack Balkin and Eugene Volokh), whom we expect to (generally) cross-post material from their own blogs.

All of this expanded effort requires additional human and financial capital to produce.  The blog started as a part-time project for me, Amy, and our assistant.  This Term, we will have four people working full- or substantially full-time (Lyle, Amy, Anna, and Adam), while the blog will be a material part of the lives of more than a dozen others, most as volunteers.  You can see that our Masthead now has more than 20 different people.  Five different people work on the Round-up, in addition to Amy’s editing.  Different features – such as Statistics, the Calendar, and Petition of the Day – each have interns or contributors assigned to them.  Despite all the free labor generously contributed by so many people, I expect the blog will cost more than $200,000 to run this Term.

Generally speaking, our readership has grown by around thirty percent per quarter.  Last Term, the blog and wiki together had roughly seven million “impressions” – i.e., clicks – which I equate with roughly four million visits (because in a single visit a reader who arrives at our front page and sees an interesting post may click on a “jump” to read the full entry, creating a second “impression”).  Our readership also includes roughly 8000 subscribers (through RSS and email), who generally do not need to visit the blog because we deliver all the content to them through the subscription.  In general, judging blog readership is notoriously difficult, but I expect that we have roughly fifteen thousand committed daily readers.  Our traffic of course goes up significantly when the Court is doing more interesting things – particularly, deciding important cases.  On those days, I believe we have closer to forty thousand readers.  And on truly huge days we can approach one hundred thousand.

My hope is that new SCOTUSblog will cause our readership to grow still more, maybe significantly.  We may of course some lose readers who do not like the new design; dramatic format and style changes like these notoriously create some backlash.  (We have already gotten an email from a reader named Jackie who assures us that we have “now officially jumped the shark” by “[t]ak[ing] a perfectly good site, and render[ing] it useless.”)  But in general, I expect that more people will come to treat the blog as a one-stop resource for information about the Court.

Our entire team hopes that you find the new blog a big improvement.  We are not professional web designers, so there inevitably will be glitches we need to fix and further changes we should make.  Please send us your reactions and suggestions.

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In the last round of orders issuing during the Supreme Court’s summer recess, the Justices on Friday refused to give British American Tobacco Co. another chance to challenge the scope of the RICO anti-racketeering law.  Without comment (and with Justice Elena Kagan not taking part), the Court denied a reheating petition to BATCo, thus leaving undisturbed its June 28 order refusing to hear the company’s legal claims.  (The case is British American Tobacco v. U.S., 09-980).

In its rehearing petition, BATCo had argued that the D.C. Circuit Court’s ruling applying RICO to conduct of the company that occurred largely abroad had been undercut by the Supreme Court’s ruling June 24 in Morrison v. National Australia Bank (08-1191).  The Morrison decision barred overseas application of U.S. securities law. BATCo argued that the same rationale should free it from RICO liability.

It does not appear that the Court considered asking for a response to the rehearing petition. Without such a request, there was no chance for rehearing to be granted.

In the last round of orders issuing during the Supreme Court’s summer recess, the Justices on Friday refused to give British American Tobacco Co. another chance to challenge the scope of the RICO anti-racketeering law.  Without comment (and with Justice Elena Kagan not taking part), the Court denied a reheating petition to BATCo, thus leaving undisturbed its June 28 order refusing to hear the company’s legal claims.  (The case is British American Tobacco v. U.S., 09-980).

In its rehearing petition, BATCo had argued that the D.C. Circuit Court’s ruling applying RICO to conduct of the company that occurred largely abroad had been undercut by the Supreme Court’s ruling June 24 in Morrison v. National Australia Bank (08-1191).  The Morrison decision barred overseas application of U.S. securities law. BATCo argued that the same rationale should free it from RICO liability.

It does not appear that the Court considered asking for a response to the rehearing petition. Without such a request, there was no chance for rehearing to be granted.

The Justices’ speeches and appearances this summer continue to garner news coverage.  At the Blog of LegalTimes, Tony Mauro reports on a discussion of cameras in the courtroom last week at the Tenth Circuit Bench and Bar Conference.  While Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg concluded that the Court should refrain from allowing cameras if any Justice has a strong objection to them, Beverley McLachlin – the Chief Justice of the Canadian Supreme Court — described the Canadian Supreme Court’s generally unremarkable experience with cameras in its courtroom.  Meanwhile, Constitutional Law Prof Blog highlights Justice Sotomayor’s response to a question at the University of Denver last week, in which she said that, despite the Court’s recent ruling in Berghuis v. Thompkins, the Court is not “eroding Miranda.” On her Court Beat blog, Joan Biskupic discusses Justice Sotomayor’s response to a different student question, about the “biggest sacrifice” Sotomayor made in pursuing her career.  That sacrifice, Sotomayor said, was “taking this job when I know that I am on the tail end of my mother’s life.”

Briefly:

• The L.A. Times editorial board weighs in on Weise v. Casper (No. 10-67), in which a cert. petition was filed by two Denver residents who were ordered to leave a 2005 town hall meeting in which then-President Bush was scheduled to discuss Social Security because one petitioner’s car had an anti-Bush bumper sticker.   The board urges the Court to grant review and recognize the “crucial distinction” between open events like town hall meetings and closed events like political rallies.

• Yesterday the full D.C. Circuit denied rehearing en banc in a Guantanamo case about the government’s power to detain noncitizens suspected of terrorism; but as they did so, as Lyle reports for SCOTUSblog, the judges also “narrow[ed] the scope” of the prior panel decision.  At Balkinization, Steve Vladeck writes that the panel decision’s “significance in other cases has been unquestionably lessened (along with any chance that the Supreme Court would feel the need to step in).”

• The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein discusses Senator Patrick Leahy’s suggestion (reported in Vermont’s Times Argus) that President Obama could make three to four Supreme Court nominations in the next six years.  Stein contends that Senator Leahy’s prediction seems to be “unguardedly wishful.”

The Justices’ speeches and appearances this summer continue to garner news coverage.  At the Blog of LegalTimes, Tony Mauro reports on a discussion of cameras in the courtroom last week at the Tenth Circuit Bench and Bar Conference.  While Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg concluded that the Court should refrain from allowing cameras if any Justice has a strong objection to them, Beverley McLachlin – the Chief Justice of the Canadian Supreme Court — described the Canadian Supreme Court’s generally unremarkable experience with cameras in its courtroom.  Meanwhile, Constitutional Law Prof Blog highlights Justice Sotomayor’s response to a question at the University of Denver last week, in which she said that, despite the Court’s recent ruling in Berghuis v. Thompkins, the Court is not “eroding Miranda.” On her Court Beat blog, Joan Biskupic discusses Justice Sotomayor’s response to a different student question, about the “biggest sacrifice” Sotomayor made in pursuing her career.  That sacrifice, Sotomayor said, was “taking this job when I know that I am on the tail end of my mother’s life.”

Briefly:

• The L.A. Times editorial board weighs in on Weise v. Casper (No. 10-67), in which a cert. petition was filed by two Denver residents who were ordered to leave a 2005 town hall meeting in which then-President Bush was scheduled to discuss Social Security because one petitioner’s car had an anti-Bush bumper sticker.   The board urges the Court to grant review and recognize the “crucial distinction” between open events like town hall meetings and closed events like political rallies.

• Yesterday the full D.C. Circuit denied rehearing en banc in a Guantanamo case about the government’s power to detain noncitizens suspected of terrorism; but as they did so, as Lyle reports for SCOTUSblog, the judges also “narrow[ed] the scope” of the prior panel decision.  At Balkinization, Steve Vladeck writes that the panel decision’s “significance in other cases has been unquestionably lessened (along with any chance that the Supreme Court would feel the need to step in).”

• The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein discusses Senator Patrick Leahy’s suggestion (reported in Vermont’s Times Argus) that President Obama could make three to four Supreme Court nominations in the next six years.  Stein contends that Senator Leahy’s prediction seems to be “unguardedly wishful.”