A bold (and silly?) prediction

As noted previously, tomorrow the Supreme Court will hand down one or more decisions, but then, after tomorrow, the following Tuesday or Wednesday (Jan. 18 or 19) seem to be the next earliest possible decision days.  Just for fun, I am going to predict now that tomorrow we won’t see Booker and Fanfan, but we will see a decision in Roper v. Simmons, the juvenile death penalty case that has both sentencing and international law significance (background here and here).

I make this prediction in part because, as noted by SCOTUSBlog and Law Dork, Justices Scalia and Breyer have plans later this week to have “A Conversation on the Relevance of Foreign Law for American Constitutional Adjudication” at American University.  (All the details on the event and a link for live viewing are here.)  I think the Justices’ conversation would be enhanced by the release of Roper before the event.  (This is, of course, just silly speculation of the kind that used to get me in trouble with this (now defunct?) blog.)

That all said, applying Murphy’s Law, I should probably predict we will get Booker and Fanfan tomorrow because a decision tomorrow could put a big wrinkle in the workshop I am scheduled to do later this week at the UNC School of Law.