Is here — seminole-tribe-v-florida-house-of-representatives-cert-petition
Here is the Florida Supreme Court’s decision and a link to the briefs below.
cert petition
Slate on Petition Stage Amicus Briefs before the Supreme Court
From Slate:
In its last term, the U.S. Supreme Court heard fewer cases than it has in any single term in more than 50 years. This means that getting your case heard at the high court is about 10 times harder than getting into Harvard. How do you up your odds? Just as a recommendation letter from a well-placed alum gets attention from an admissions office, a supportive brief from an advocacy group, sent to the court at the stage when it’s deciding whether to take a case, flags a case for the justices.
Each year, parties that have lost in the lower courts file about 9,000 petitions for a writ of certiorari (cert for short) in which they beg the court to hear them. The Supreme Court has nearly complete discretion over which cases it will take. Last term, only 69 cert petitions resulted in arguments before the justices. The lucky few were more likely to have gotten a helping hand from a friend-of-the-court brief, filed by an outside group with an interest in the case’s outcome. Influence, in this sense, is all about timing. Amicus briefs, as they’re known, tend to pile up on both sides of a case once the court takes it, all competing for the justices’ attention. But the amicus briefs filed before the court grants cert are much rarer, and, accordingly, more influential. Yet this is a tool that liberal groups often fail to use.
Harrah’s v. NGV Gaming Cert Petition
The questions presented are:
1. Does the Dictionary Act’s rule that words used in the present tense also include the future tense, unless the context indicates otherwise, only apply if the statutory text at issue is ambiguous?
2. Does the term. “Indian lands” as used in 25 U.S.C. §§ 81 and 2701-2721 include both land that “is held by the United States in trust for an Indian tribe” and land that “will be held in trust by the United States for an Indian tribe”?
Here is the brief — harrahs-v-ngv-gaming-cert-petn
And here is the lower court opinion — guidiville-band-v-ngv-gaming
United States Opposition to Cert Petition in City of Pocatello v. Idaho
Here is the cert petition.
MichGO v. Kempthorne Cert Petition
Here is is: michgo-cert-pet-10-23-08
The questions presented are two-fold. First, the petitioners raise the nondelegation doctrine argument that caused Judge Rogers Brown in the D.C. Circuit to dissent below. And second, the petitioners make the same argument about recently recognized tribes that the Supreme Court will decide in Carcieri v. Kempthorne.
See our earlier posts here and here and here and here and a link to an Indian Country Today article about MichGO.
The interesting question here will be whether the government will file a response at all, given that there’s no circuit split (by MichGO’s admission), that the SCT already denied cert on the first issue in the Carcieri litigation, and that the second issue will be decided by Carcieri.
EPA Cert Petition in EPA v. New Jersey
No Divided Argument in Carcieri v. Kempthorne
The Supreme Court released its other orders from last Monday’s long conference.
The motion of petitioners Donald L. Carcieri, Governor of Rhode Island, and the State of Rhode Island for divided argument is denied. The motion of petitioner Town of Charlestown for divided argument is denied. The motion of Narragansett Indian Tribe for leave to participate in oral argument as amicus curiae and for divided argument is denied.
So I assume the State will let Ted Olson on behalf of the governor argue the case against Ed Kneedler on the government’s side.
Here are the cert denials:
Justice Alito Leaves the Cert Pool
From the NYTs:
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. is getting out of the pool.
For almost 20 years, eight of the nine justices on the Supreme Court have assigned their law clerks to a shared legal labor pool that streamlines the work of reviewing incoming cases.
Only Justice John Paul Stevens has declined to participate. He relies on his own clerks to help cull perhaps 80 worthy cases from the thousands of appeals, called petitions for certiorari, that reach the court each year. The justices who participate in the arrangement, known around the court as the “cert. pool,” receive a common “pool memo” on each case from a single clerk. The memo analyzes the petition and makes a recommendation about whether it should be granted.
Utilities File Cert Petition in EPA Mercury Case
Here is the cert petition.
And here and here are links to our previous post, with the D.C. Circuit’s opinion and other materials.
SCOTUSBlog’s Petitions to Watch for the Long Conference
Here is the list of the petitions to watch according to SCOTUSBlog for the long conference. It includes four Indian law cases, Kickapoo v. Texas, Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs, US v. Navajo Nation, and Kemp v. Osage Nation.
We agree (see here).
Turtle Talk 
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