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Over the Summer, the Supreme Court will grant miscellaneous orders as needed for individual cases. And usually, towards the end of July and the end of August, the Court issues a formal orders list. Most of the entries are denials of rehearing or orders in pending cases. But today’s order list had a surprise entry: a cert grant!
25-246 JOUPPI, KENNETH J. V. ALASKA The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted.
The question presented is “whether, in determining whether a fine contravenes the Excessive Fines Clause, courts may consider the gravity of the underlying offense purely in the abstract or should consider the gravity of the specific defendant’s wrongdoing.”
This case has an unusual posture. The cert petition was filed in August 2025. On November 25, the case was distributed for the December 12 conference. No action was taken on the petition for some time. It appears the Justice may have been holding the case pending the resolution of Pung v. Isabella County, which was decided on June 23. On June 25, the Petitioner filed a supplemental brief arguing that Pung “proved largely irrelevant to this case, plenary review continues to be warranted” and “casts no doubt on the cert-worthiness of the petition here.” Respondent did not file anything. The case was then conferenced for the June 29 cleanup conference. But there was no grant on June 30, along with the other cases.
Now, nearly three weeks later, there is a grant.
What happened here? Did the Justices tentatively decide to grant on June 29, pending some further internal deliberations? Maybe a Justice wanted to take one more look before granting? Did the Justices (gasp!) talk about the case over the summer break? Maybe they just wanted to get the case on the docket to fill up the fall calendar?
This process is very unusual.
SCOTUSBlog identified a few other instances where the Court granted a case over the summer. For example, in August 2012, cert was granted in Chafin v. Chafin. But this was a case distributed for the long conference that was granted earlier. Did the Justices find time amidst the Obamacare summer to talk about the case?
SCOTUSBlog identified two other cases granted in August 2021, Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez and Garland v. Gonzalez. Both cases were conferenced at the July 1 conference and granted about a month later.
Somewhat relatedly, next week I will have a essay published arguing that the Court should eliminate the summer recess, in part, to avoid cert petitions piling up over the summer. Today’s orders list is a useful data point!
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