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Notes -
Does SCOTUS normally "save the best till last"? We have seen a flurry of opinions at the end of the term, and they appear to be in roughly increasing order of importance, with no sign of the 3-4 biggest cases, which I think are:
The first three are all "Is this even the same Constitution?" level cases, and noisy idiots on both sides think that Watson is a "Do we still have a functioning democracy?" question, although in my view it is an unimportant technicality of election law. I would say the only cases of this importance which have been decided are Learning Resources (the tariffs) and Callais (race-based redistricting), both of which had strong practical reasons for the majority pushing a decision as fast as possible. Cook and Slaughter weren't even argued late in the term.
So the question I am asking is whether the justices are holding the biggest cases to drop together on the last day of the term out of some daft sense of drama (or more nefariously, to minimise the amount of public and press attention they get compared to dropping them separately), or is there some hitch delaying getting the opinions written. I can definitely imagine the cases being delayed because the justices are writing increasingly angry concurrences and dissents at each other, but it is also within the realms of possibility that there is still substantial haggling about getting to 5 votes. Barbara and Slaughter are both cases where a plurality opinion would embarrass the Court as well as being a practical headache.
Can we please collectively decide to ban single word court case references forever and sentence people who break this ban to death?
It's a pretty standard way to refer to a case, so I'd vote against - but, in a place like this where you can't assume every watches the US Supreme Court closely, you 100% should also give some context the first time you refer to one. Not just the general subject matter, but what the central question is. Or where applicable, what you might remember from news media reporting about it (whether those reports are accurate or not).
It's only standard among people who are in too deep. When US schoolchildren learn about court cases, they learn about Marbury v. Madison, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Brown v. Board of Education, not Marbury, Plessy, and Brown.
I've noticed an increase in single-word references to court cases in the past decade. One particularly irritating one is people saying "Roe" for Roe v. Wade since context isn't always clear in speech and row/rho/Ro/Roe/roe can mean many things.
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