Tony Mauro at NLJ and Bob Egelko at the SF Chron have SCOTUS term wrap-up articles with similar themes. Cases in which the "conservative" position prevailed this term were not blockbusters; they were decided on narrower grounds than they might have been. Yet both stories imply this may be part of a strategy to build toward blockbuster decisions in the future.

Egelko: "Still, for the court's conservatives, 'it was a term pregnant with possibilities for the future,' said Erwin Chemerinsky, a liberal scholar and dean of the UC Irvine law school."

Mauro's piece carries the subhead, "Decisions suggest chief justice may be slow-playing Court's march to the right." "Slow-playing" is a poker term for betting a powerful hand passively, with calls or small raises rather than large raises, to bait more players in and build the pot before dropping the hammer.

Are major changes in the offing for criminal law? Maybe. Justice Kennedy is hard to predict. Justice-to-be Sotomayor may be more favorable to the prosecution in criminal matters than Justice Souter was, but it is hard to predict whether and in what direction she may drift. Justice White had a generally pro-prosecution orientation from the beginning of his long tenure to the end, while Justice Souter seemed that way at first and then drifted. We'll have to wait and see.

Update: James Taranto weighs in at the WSJ:

Still, it is fair to say that the Roberts court is only as conservative as Justice Kennedy will allow it to be. On subjects like abortion and the exclusionary rule as well as on race, that is only very modestly conservative....

By declining to resolve major constitutional questions now, the justices leave open the possibility that a future majority, more liberal and less scrupulous about constraining its power, will decide them. Such is the hazard of judicial restraint.

In other words, the "slow-play" metaphor doesn't work, because Roberts' hand isn't really strong.