Monday: Very little of interest to criminal law practitioners is happening today. The orders list contained no new grants of certiorari. That is normal when the grants are announced on conference day, as they were last week. Several crim. pro. cases involving cars were denied, as described by Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog. Oral arguments are a couple of real snoozers. Kansas and Colorado sally forth into the second century of their battle over the Arkansas River. Shades of Bleak House. The other case involves arbitration and labor contracts.

Tuesday: Opinions are possible. I'm expecting Hedgpeth v. Pulido to be among the early opinions this term. Arguments are two civil cases of no particular interest.

Wednesday: The arguments are two civil cases. However, they involve federalism issues that touch on criminal law.

Philip Morris USA v. Williams involves the question of when an independent state procedural ground of decision is "adequate" to block consideration of a federal question. This issue comes up very often in habeas cases. The Supreme Court's jurisprudence on this topic is a mess. The unwritten rule in the Ninth Circuit is that all California grounds are per se inadequate. CJLF filed this brief supporting neither party, asking the Court to clean up this "untidy area of our law."

Haywood v. Drown is a prison litigation case asking whether the state legislature can kick 42 USC § 1983 actions out of state courts.