SCOTUS
We currently have one case scheduled for the January 10th conference. The other two cases have not been rescheduled yet. I do not know what we will see in the court filings before the 10th.
What does it mean to be conferenced?
When a party petitions the Supreme Court for a Writ of Certiorari, they are requesting that their case be heard by the court. If the petition is submitted through the standard channels, it is processed in the “standard” way.
If the request is submitted through the emergency docket, sometimes called the shadow docket, then a single Supreme Court Justice will evaluate the submission. They can then refer it to the court as a whole, or they can deny the request, or they can request more filings.
Regardless, emergency or regular, cases that are referred to the court will be examined. This happens in stages.
The first stage is the parties filing briefs on why the Court should grant cert or why they should deny cert. The parties can decline to file briefs, but they should file formal documents saying they are not filing.
When all the briefs have been filed, the case is “Fully briefed.”
Once the case is fully briefed, it is distributed for conference. This means that the briefs are provided to the justices for examination. The justices have their law clerks do law clerk things and provide reports. All of this is generally kept out of the public light. Nobody knows what the justices ask of their clerks, but former clerks have reported doing such things, in general terms.
After the case is distributed, it is scheduled for a conference. The conference happens on a Friday. During the conference, only the Justices are present. No clerks, no witnesses, no experts, just the justices.
They discuss the cases that were scheduled for conference. They can also discuss whatever else they want. They decide, not you, not I, not anybody else.
They can also talk to each other before the conference and make decisions outside the conference.
The conference is the formal event.
If the Justices want, they can reschedule a case, before they discuss the case in conference. This is what happened to Snope and Ocean State Tactical.
After the conference, the court will issue their orders. These orders will be “grant”, “deny”, or “relist”. If a petition is denied, it is over. If the petition is relisted, it means that the Justices will be discussing the petition again, in a future conference. If a petition is granted, then it is going down.
A case that has been relisted can be relisted for any reason. Some known reasons include having time to write a statement to attach to a denial of cert, sometimes it is because they need additional information. One of the common reasons in the Robert’s court is a “suitability” phase.
John Roberts likes to have a case relisted after the Justices have decided, internally, to grant cert. This is to give the law clerks time to thoroughly investigate the case to make sure there are no hidden issues or things that might moot the case.
We now have three Second Amendment cases that have been distributed for conference. One of which is currently scheduled for conference on the 10th.
Infrastructure
We have completed most of the network upgrade. There is still a server that requires a network interface upgrade. There is still a rack that requires a switch upgrade. Not to bad.
We need to finish running the redundant fiber network for backup purposes. Once we finish running the redundant fiber, we will upgrade the primary router and make sure everything understands multipath routing.
All the cluster entities have been placed on virtual networks. This means that they no longer need to worry about multipath nor the physical layout of the networks. A complete separation of tasks.
It turned out that I was having issues with my nodes having their clocks drift/skew relative to each other. This has been fixed, which leads me to want a Stratum-1 NTP server, again.
The last time around, I used a handheld GPS unit as my clock source. It worked wonderfully. This time I’m looking at something in an IoT idea.
I am currently researching NTP servers via Wi-Fi. If that gives good results, I might just do a Raspberry Pi Pico W and put the darn thing outside in a waterproof enclosure. I’m still investigating. I’m also attempting to avoid soldering as somebody broke my Weller soldering station.
Christmas
Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas!
We hope you had a joyous Christmas.
Happy New Year!
And we wish you a happy new year! My your fortune be bright.
Question of the week?
Having had time to learn about what happened in western North Caroline after the hurricane, what changes in your prepping model have you made?