This week, the Court has returned to action and is scheduled to hold private conferences today and tomorrow. Any petitions granted or cases decided should be reflected on Friday’s order list.

New Calendar Released

Today I also got an email from Blake Hawthorne, the Clerk of the Court, pointing me to the Court’s new online calendar.

Last year, the calendar was a one-page PDF file. This year, the Court has a hypertext calendar that lets you see which arguments are scheduled for a particular sitting and what those mysterious “other sessions” really are. There is also a link to add a particular calendar event to your own calendar. (( This uses a .vcs file, which seems to work fine for me. ))

If you missed the one-page view, that is also still available on another page.

I’ll explore the calendar more over time, but this is my first take:

Oral Argument Dates

The Court’s oral argument sittings for the Fall are:

If you have a petition that has already been granted but not yet set for argument, it will very likely be set on the October or November dates. Now that the Court has finalized its calendar, I would expect those argument settings to be made fairly soon.

On the other hand, if you are still waiting for the Court to decide whether to hear your case, the earliest you are likely to get an argument date would be December. And it’s quite possible that even the December argument dates will fill up during the Court’s long conferences of the next few weeks.

There are five argument sittings for the Spring, with the last falling at the very end of April.

Conference Dates

After an initial burst of conferences in August, the Court seems to be having one major conference sitting each month for the rest of the Fall. (November is altered slightly by the holiday.)

In the Spring, the schedule is a little more varied.

Last Week’s Articles

This is for those of you waiting on my “weekly preview” email…