Bonus 237: Looking Toward OT2026

None of the 24 cases currently on the Court's "merits" docket for its upcoming term involve high-profile Trump administration disputes. But at least three sets of those cases are coming—and quickly.

Buried within all of the news the Supreme Court made last week were a series of grants of certiorari—including a number of high-profile cases the justices will now consider in their October 2026 Term, which begins on October 5. Last week’s grants bring to 24 the total number of argument slots that the justices have now filled. Assuming the Court follows its recent pattern, we expect somewhere between 55 and 60 total arguments, meaning the Court has filled roughly 40% of its merits docket for its upcoming term.

Of course, that means the Court still has ~60% to go—and one of the things that’s missing from the docket to this point is Trump-related cases. To be sure, I count eight cases among the 24 already on the docket in which the federal government or one of its officers is a party. But none of those eight are really about major Trump administration policies/political disputes.

So which Trump cases are coming? Today’s bonus post identifies three (sets of) cases that I expect to reach the Supreme Court during OT2026—all of which will be, for obvious reasons, among the highest-profile cases the justices are likely to end up deciding next term: (1) those arising from the administration’s immigration detention policies; (2) a battery of appropriations/spending disputes; and (3) in a world in which Democrats retake either chamber of Congress in November, a rash of high-profile disputes over the inevitable congressional subpoenas that will follow.

But whether or not these specific predictions hold, the larger point is that the highest-profile decisions of OT2026 are, I suspect, going to come from cases that aren’t yet on the docket. In other words, if you want to know what we’ll be looking back at a year from now as the biggest cases of OT2026, don’t look at what the Court has already agreed to hear; look at what’s coming that it won’t want (or be able) to avoid.

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