Roberts' Rules?

Is the appearance of a trio of unanimous decisions the watershed moment that will come to define the Roberts Court? Possibly. But it is far too soon to tell.

What's the sample size we're dealing with here? Three cases.

Rumsfeld v. FAIR - 8-0 unanimous decision.

Illinois Tool v. Independent Ink - 8-0 unanimous decision.

Schneidler v. NOW - 8-0 unanimous decision.

What else marks the decisions from the current term and particularly Roberts' authored decisions? David Barron notes that Roberts' three decisions thus far are marked by the following:

No references to law review literature, treaties, casebooks, or anything else not written by one of the three branches themselves. That got me to thinking: perhaps it's not just foreign law that the new conservative judicial philosophy thinks is illegitimate; it's everything that's not an autoritative statement of a constitutionally recognized branch of govenrment.

Well, that could simply be a result of the sample size.

Does this mean that Chief Justice Roberts has some cramped style of decision making or a far more elegant opinion style.

It is simply too soon to tell, but that's not going to keep the Supreme Court watchers from trying to read tea leaves to determine the future trends of decision making of the court.

However, what these cases show is that Roberts intended to write clearly written and concisely stated law and support for the positions taken.

And that bodes quite well for the future of the Court.

Others commenting on the Court's direction thus far: Professor Bainbridge, SCOTUSBlog, and Volokh Conspiracy.