After its relatively light docket this year, the Court accepted a surprisingly large number of cases for argument in the next Term.  According to some observers, Chief Justice Roberts wants to move more of the workload to earlier in the Term and avoid the physically draining task of trying to hand down most of the major opinions in the last weeks.  Among the cases docketed for the fall are:

• The Federal Communications Commission's strict policy on the use of profanity over the regulated airways has been challenged, and the Court will review it on First Amendment grounds. (FCC v. Fox Television Stations)
• Officials in Pleasant Grove City, Utah, have asked the Court to review a lawsuit brought by the religious group known as the Summum, which wants to display a monument with the "Seven Aphorisms of Summum" engraved on it.  If the group prevails, the city claims, local governments would be inundated with demands to display donated monuments. (Pleasaant Grove City v. Summum)
• There will be two death penalty cases.  In one the justices will look at whether the prosecution's withholding of mitigating evidence deprived the defendant of a fair trial. (Cone v. Bell) On the other, the Court will decide whether a lawyer's failure to provide mitigating evidence at the sentencing stage of a capital trial constituted ineffective representation. (Bell v. Virginia)
• There are, as usual, several cases on criminal procedure.  Lower courts are divided over whether when an unsuspecting drug dealer opens a door to a police informant masquerading as a customer, does he also permit the police to enter and search his home without a warrant.  The Court will try to answer that question, and has asked opposing counsel to argue whether a fairly recent decision, Saucier v. Katz (2001), should be overruled. (Pearson v. Callahan) The Court will also look at whether to carve out more exceptions to the exclusionary rule, a century-old doctrine that forbids prosecutors from using evidence obtained by the police in an improper search.  It is no secret that some members of the current Court would like to limit that rule. (Herring v. United States)
• An case important to both federal as well as state prosecutors will be heard when the Court looks at the boundaries of prosecutorial immunity.  Under long-standing law, prosecutors are absolutely immune for their judgments in handling cases, even if a faulty decisions results in a wrongful conviction.  But with many prosecutors' offices now operating as a large law firms, the person who makes the actual decision may never step into the court room. The Ninth Circuit ruled that prosecutos who serve primarily as managers are not entitled to the immunity. (Van de Kamp v. Goldstein)
• The Court will hear three cases on the environment.  One will deal with the cost-benefit analysis used by the Environmental Protection Agency to determine water quality standards, and how far an administration may weaken those standards without the approval of Congress. (Entergy Corp. v. EPA) A second case will deal with the Navy's claim that it has to test and train in sonar use in areas where those tests may be harmful or even fatal to whales and other marine mammals. (Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council) Finally, the Court will hear a case in which the State of Alaska and a gold mining company are trying to fend off a challenge by environmentalists to the planned dumping of mine tailings into a lake in the Tongass National Forest. Both the Corps of Engineers and the EPA allowed a permit to be issued. (Coeur Alaska Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council; State of Alaska v. SACC)
• In still another case growing out of the Bush administration's flouting of constitutional guarantees, the Court will determine whether top government officials can be sued for damages by Muslim men rounded up and imprisoned in the United States under harsh conditions following the 9/11 attacks.  A federal appeals court rejected the claim of immunity by former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III. (Ashcroft v. Iqbel)
• Among other matters, the Court will review a $79.5 million punitive damages award against Philip Morris, and also whether cigarette companies can be sued in state courts for deceptive advertising of "light cigarettes." They will decide who owns money misappropriated by the Marcos family when it ruled the Philippines, and whether men who are sperm donors have any parental rights to children conceived with their sperm.