SUPREME COURT ROUND-UP

Today's five Supreme Court decisions leave seven to be decided this Term. The Court will issue decisions in some or all of these cases on Monday.

The seven remaining cases (and the sittings in which they were argued) are the three terrorism-related cases (Apr.), Sosa (Alien Tort Statute) (Mar.), Ashcroft v. ACLU (Child Online Pornography Act) (Feb.), and two Miranda warnings cases (Dec.).

Justice Thomas is the likely author of both Miranda cases because he has no other decisions from the December sitting.

Justice Breyer is the only Justice without an opinion in the February sitting, so he'll likely be writing Ashcroft.

Justice Souter is the only Justice without an opinion in the March sitting, so he he'll likely be writing Sosa.

April has the three terrorism cases and three Justices -- the Chief, Stevens and O'Connor -- without opinions from the sitting.

The number of majority opinions for each Justice for the Term so far (and giving both Stevens and O'Connor credit for the campaign finance case) are:

Rehnquist: 7
Stevens: 7
O'Connor: 7
Scalia: 9
Kennedy: 7
Souter: 7
Thomas: 7
Ginsburg: 9
Breyer: 7
Per curiam: 1

There's speculation that Kennedy lost a majority to Ginsburg in the Tax Injunction Act case, so if you bump those two to 8 each, the predictions for the remaining cases work out fairly well with respect to Term-wide distribution of assignments (i.e., 8 for everyone except for Scalia and Thomas, with 9 each).