It is the first Monday in October and that means two things…

They begin announcing the Nobel Prizes for this year and…
The U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term.

Now, I will leave the Nobel Prizes (and their humorous cousins the Ig Nobel Prizes) to you.  (Although it does strike me that there is something theologically significant about the fact that cows with names give more milk than cows without names. See the Ig Nobel award for Veterinary Medicine.)

But with the start of the new Supreme Court year it brings a list of the cases that the court has agreed to hear, and the vastly longer list of those the Court will not hear.

For those looking for a Supreme resolution to the diversity of views and court decisions on church property, the trust clause, and neutral versus hierarchical principles, we won’t have it from the national court this year.  The Court has declined the request of St. James of Newport Beach to have their California high court decision reviewed.  If you look at the list of court orders you will see that their case, 08-1579, is just one in an approximately 80 page list of cases that the court has declined to hear, almost all with out comment.

What this means is that the case goes back to trial court as the California supremes ordered.  It also means that once the trial court has rendered a decision the case can once again make its way through the appeals system and possibly have another shot at the U.S. high court.  There is also a possibility that a different property case could make it there first.

As always, for the legal context, interpretation and decoding into plain English check out the Anglican Curmudgeon.

And the story continues.