re: #117 Belafon

By the time a court case made its way to the SCOTUS, we’ll have nine again.

An interesting thing I learned about Scalia’s death: Any cases already decided but not released are voided and will have to be decided again.

Didn’t know that about unreleased decisions having to be decided again, but it makes sense, basically a revote.

The interesting thing will be if the GOP is successful in blocking any appointment, we would basically be half way through the Court’s next term with only 8 justices. Considering we’re about half way through this term (it runs October to June or July), we’d effectively be looking at a full term with only 8 judges.

Where that’s going to reck havoc is when cases go up due to a circuit split. If they can’t get 5 votes to resolve the circuit split, the law will actually be different in different parts of the country.