The Supreme Court issued six more opinions this week, bringing the total of decided cases to thirty eight. Twenty-three cases remain, which is a substantial number if the Court is going to complete its work before the end of June.
As was true two weeks ago, the rate at which cases have been decided matches that of last term, but is well behind the rate of decision-making we observed in prior years. In theory, there are nine remaining potential opinion days in June (setting aside the Juneteenth holiday), but as of this writing the Court does not plan to issue any more opinions until June 20. If that holds, we will likely see some opinions the first week of July. (It would be quite unusual for the Court to issue opinions after July 4, though that happened in OT 2019 due to Covid-19.)
The Court's opinions still show a surprising degree of unanimity, though (as expected) we are starting to see more divisions as the justices release opinions in the more difficult cases. The justices have been unanimous in the judgement in 25 of 38 cases decided so far—approximately two-thirds of argued cases—but some of those cases have seen sharp splits over rationale, and the proportion of unanimous cases is almost certain to drop between now and the end of the term.
