A.S. Haley: Supreme Court to Consider Church Property Petitions This Thursday

Monday, June 11, 2012

One of the most comprehensive blogs to cover the United States Supreme Court is SCOTUS blog, written by former clerks to the Supreme Court justices who are now practicing attorneys. They pride themselves on their ability to cull through the weekly avalanches of petitions for review, and to select out those very few which, in their expert opinion, are likely candidates for acceptance.

Their post covering the "Petitions to Watch" for the upcoming Supreme Court conference this next Thursday, June 14, is now up. It discusses thirteen of the petitions pending on the Court's calendar and noted as having been circulated for consideration at the June 14 conference.

It is not possible to get an exact number of all the petitions which the Court will take up next Thursday, but if the list of petitions acted upon at the May 31 conference is any indication (and announced Monday, June 4), then there will be approximately 150 for it to consider. More than half of those will be in forma pauperis petitions, i.e., petitions (often hand-written) submitted by prisoners and others who have no money either to pay an attorney to represent them, or to pay the fees to file a petition with the Court. But at least 50 or so will be petitions with counsel on both sides, formally printed and bound in the manner the Court's rules require. the rest

The Episcopal Church (USA)'s responding brief in the Bishop Seabury case [caution: large .pdf download] is an especially noteworthy one, partly for its arrogance in cataloging all of the minor decisions in its favor by inferior courts which have absolutely no weight as precedents, as well as for its egregious misrepresentation of the cases which have gone against it. If I have time, I will have more to say on the briefs before Thursday.