As you know, yesterday the Supreme Court granted cert in Horne v. U.S.D.A., No. 12-123 (cert. granted Nov. 20, 2012), the third takings claim this season. As this article asked, what, if anything, is going on? Is it just "serendipity" or a "return to the norm" as two lawprofs quoted in the article suggested, or might it be something else?
Of course, no one knows but the justices themselves (and maybe the cert pool clerks). But that won't prevent us from engaging in a little lighthearted speculation. One theory that might explain why the Court seems to be particularly interested in property cases this term is the recent election.
It takes only four of the justices to agree to review a case, and we can safely count Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito as very property friendly, and Justice Kennedy and Chief Justice Roberts are moderately property friendly. If at least four of them saw (for the two pre-election grants) or now see (for Horne) the handwriting on the wall -- that President Obama will continue to appoint justices who are not property friendly -- they may be open to putting more property cases on the docket before there are any new vacancies on the Court.
If this theory is correct, then now's the time for those who have certworthy issues to try and tee those cases up, because the short-term future may be your golden opportunity to get a case more noticed than it might otherwise be. We're aware of one or two cases in the pipeline (or soon to be) that seem like possible candidates.
Then again, we might be dead wrong (the Court did not grant cert in another takings case yesterday). But it sure is fun to speculate.
