Today's Decisions

I've noted a few of these points already on Twitter, but here are some items of minor interest to me in this morning's decisions from the Supreme Court.  (For more thorough coverage, go to SCOTUSBlog; for my own more thorough thoughts, come visit here later.)

Alleyne:

• Justice Thomas writes an opinion joined by the four "liberal" Justices.  I can't think of a time this has happened since Atlantic Sounding v. Townsend and United States v. Bajakajian, and both of those were before Justices Sotomayor and Kagan joined the Court.  If that's right, I'm pretty sure this is the first time Justice Thomas has assigned a majority opinion as the senior-most Justice.  [UPDATE:  As a commenter points out, not actually the first time for a CT assignment, or even for this lineup.  But still unusual.]
• It's interesting that Justice Alito launches a full-on criticism of Apprendi in his dissent (including a citation to the brilliant Jonathan Mitchell, former GMU law professor and current SG of Texas); but it's also interesting that none of the other dissenters (including the Chief and Justice Kennedy) join in.
• Not for the first time, I despair of the Court having a coherent theory of stare decisis.  Not that there aren't coherent theories, just that the Court doesn't have them.

Salinas:

• Justice Thomas's reiterated suggestion that Griffin v. California should be overruled reminds me of why I like Justice Thomas so much.
  

Inter Tribal Council of Arizona:

• Admin law scholars or ambitious students looking for a nice essay topic, see footnote 10: "The [Commission] currently lacks a quorum—indeed, the Commission has not a single active Commissioner. If the EAC proves unable to act on a renewed request, Arizona would be free to seek a writ of mandamus to 'compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed.' 5 U. S. C. §706(1). It is a nice point, which we need not resolve here, whether a court can compel agency action that the agency itself, for lack of the statutorily required quorum, is incapable of taking."
• Justice Thomas's willingness to break the don't-cite-Bush-v.-Gore taboo is another reason I like Justice Thomas so much.

Actavis:

• That's a lot of citations to legal scholarship in the majority opinion.  (I counted 18, but I was counting quickly, and there were a lot of repeat citations to Areeda and Hovenkamp.)

Maracich:

• I was skimming the opinion without noticing who was the author until I got to page 26: "The amount of damages sought in the complaint is based on the number of persons,over 30,000 individuals, whose personal and highly sensitive information was disclosed and who were solicited. Whether the civil damages provision in §2724, after a careful and proper interpretation, would permit an award in this amount, and if so whether principles of due process and other doctrines that protect against excessive awards would come into play, is not an issue argued or presented in this case."  Must be Justice Kennedy! I thought.
• The fearsome foursome of Scalia, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor are once again in dissent.