The Bilksi ruling is due soon. It won’t come next week, but might come the week after. Below are the possible dates.
scotusblog.com have a calendar for April, May, and June. They say that opinions are expected on these dates:
- April 20th, 21st, 27th, 28th
- May 3rd, 17th, 24th
- June 1st, 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th
After June, it’s the Summer break. All the expert commentators I’ve read have said the opinions will arrive before the Summer break. Some are saying it’s due any day now.
Their predictions are based on the assumption that opinions are only ever handed down during the red blocks or the blue days of the supremecourt.gov calendar. I checked this against the opinions handed down during this term between January and March, and they were right with a single exception where an opinion was handed down the day after a red block. So those dates should be pretty reliable.
Patently-o posted an interesting prediction that Justice Stevens will write the opinion – but that prediction is just based on a comment made by a professor on someone else’s blog. Still interesting.
I posted recently on Which ways could Bilski go? and I’ll try to go into more detail this coming week.
UPDATE: The folks at ipwatchdog.com have done their own analysis. Their analysis was more thorough, and gives roughly the same conclusions, except that they tag a few other dates as possible. I haven’t checked their methods.