April showers bring May flowers—and maybe more Supreme Court rulings! The justices are behind the pace of decisions in the last four terms—anticipation is building in a term that offers a number of potential landmark rulings. Also: We also check out SCOTUS-Toons, a new way of “seeing” arguments in the high court. And take a peek at a lost-but-found segment of a pre-SCOTUS Thurgood Marshall television interview. Thanks for reading SCB. We welcome your feedback, tips and suggestions: [email protected] and [email protected].

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Waiting for Decisions

Daniel Ortiz, director of the U.S. Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law, has the dubious honor of having argued the oldest undecided case on the justices' argument docket—seven months and counting.

The justices heard Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, one of a consolidated trio of cases, as the term's first argument, on the term's first day, Oct. 2. The trio asks the high court whether worker arbitration agreements that prohibit class or collective actions violate federal labor laws.

As of today, Epic Systems is one of 39 argued cases—out of 63—awaiting final resolution.

“We did think that Epic could take a long time to come down so we're not really surprised,” said Ortiz, who shared argument time with former National Labor Relations Board general counsel Richard Griffin Jr. “It's the delay in all the other cases that's surprising us.”

Indeed, the slow pace of decisions has been the topic of conversation in the court's press room and among lawyers crowding the halls of the court building in the last several months.

Let's take a look at where the court is as of today compared to the same period in the last four terms: The October 2013 term was the high-water mark with 36 signed decisions by May 1, 2014. The numbers steadily decrease with each term: 2014 term: 33; 2015 term: 31; 2016 term: 27; 2017 term: 25. Adam Feldman of Empirical SCOTUS has a deep dive into the numbers here.

May and June are traditionally heavy decision months so the justices are still likely to wrap up business by the end of June. But there is precedent for a term spilling over into July.

Part of the slow decision pace is undoubtedly because of the large number of difficult and consequential challenges before the justices. And that, in turn, often produces many separate opinions which simply take time to produce.

But sometimes it's not the major, headline-grabbing challenge that defies easy resolution. As the late Justice Antonin Scalia once told me (Marcia) in an interview: “There is no relationship between the difficulty of a case and its importance. It could be the most insignificant case, but it's a bear figuring out the right answer.”

No one really expects to see a decision in the Trump Administration's travel ban case, argued April 25, until the term's final day. But here are four earlier and major argued cases, and their advocates, that could bring some surprises in May:

—➤ Fourth Amendment and cell phone location data: Carpenter v. United States
Nathan Wessler of the American Civil Liberties Union for Carpenter, and Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben for the United States.

—➤ Sports betting: Murphy v. NCAA; N.J. Thoroughbred Horsemen's Assn. v. NCAA
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Theodore Olson for Murphy; Paul Clement of Kirkland & Ellis for NCAA; Principal Deputy Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall for the United States.

—➤ Political apparel in the voting booth: Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Manksy
J. David Breemer, Pacific Legal Foundation, for Alliance; Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Daniel Rogan for Mansky.

—➤ Union “fair share” fees: Janus v. AFSCME
William Messenger, National Right to Work Foundation, for Janus; U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco for the United States and Janus; and David Frederick of Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, for AFSCME.

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An 'Animated' Supreme Court

Want to see video of U.S. Supreme Court arguments? Everyone does, but nobody can because cameras are not permitted in the courtroom. But now there is an alternative—on Twitter.

SCOTUS-Toons, cartoon animations by computer science undergrad Daniel Lee Meeks, are beginning to catch the attention of appellate lawyers and other SCOTUS fans, such as veteran advocates Robert Loeb of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, and Daniel Geyser of Stris & Maher.

Meeks said he started last summer playing with ways to use the computer to automatically generate animations from audio files. “Basically it was just opening and closing a cartoon character's mouth based on how loud the audio is,” he said. That's a screen shot, above, of SCOTUS-Toons argument clip.

Looking for something to animate, Meeks recalled how in 2012 he tried to find video of the oral arguments in the Affordable Care Act challenge—National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. He found only audio. Later, HBO's John Oliver aired his “Puppy Justices” video that people started editing into complete oral argument videos.

“I wished something like Puppy Justices or SCOTUS-Toons had been around when I wanted to 'see' the NFIB v. Sebelius arguments,” Meeks said. “Even though Puppy Justices seemed like more of a joke, I thought if taken a little bit seriously, something like them was not a bad idea since they were the only way to 'see' what happened in the Supreme Court.”

Meeks said he researched the feasibility of creating hour-long videos from the SCOTUS audio itself. The audio and transcripts from the Supreme Court website and time code data from the Oyez website, he said, made it easy enough to try to make a video for every oral argument this term.

Over last summer, Meeks created a computer program that he used to animate videos for three Supreme Court cases. He created cartoon avatars for the justices and the lawyers arguing each case. He said it takes a few hours to create a video from scratch with his program.

“I did not expect anyone to watch any of the SCOTUS-Toons videos, other than a few of the most high profile cases,” said Meeks. “But over the last couple of weeks, a few of the lawyers that argued before the Supreme Court have started finding the SCOTUS-Toons videos of their cases and have been tweeting them and people have started watching them—all the way to the end.”

One of those lawyers was Orrick's Loeb, who recently tweeted his admiration.

“My reaction was astonishment and amazement that someone would take the time to produce something so zany for all of the court's cases this term,” Loeb said. “I think some of the depictions are pretty good, others less so. Maybe some of the justices will not like their avatars and this will motivate them to allow real video. I doubt it, but hope springs eternal.”

Meeks said he hopes to work in the creative side of computer science—animation or gaming. In the meantime, he plans to continue SCOTUS-Toons next term and create some videos this summer of landmark Supreme Court arguments.

“Obergefell v. Hodges (same-sex marriage) and Miranda v. Arizona (Fifth Amendment) have already been requested by someone and I personally want to make a video for NFIB v. Sebelius,” he said.

And the computer program he uses to make the cartoons needs some tweaking, he said.

“Many of the people that watched my videos are more observant than I thought they would be,” Meeks said. “One person has pointed out that the clock in the background showed the wrong time. I was not even aware what time the clock showed and I drew it.”

Saving Thurgood Marshall

What may be the only footage of a 1956 interview of Thurgood Marshall with television journalist Mike Wallace has been saved and restored by Ira Gallen of Ira H. Gallen Video Resources in New York City.

In the interview segment, Marshall, then head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, criticized the Democratic Party and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower's lack of effort on behalf of integration. Wallace also asked Marshall whether he has any sympathy for the white Southerner “who is forced to change his way of life.”

Gallen, who calls himself “the unofficial Baby-Boomer guru of my television-collecting generation,” said he acquired a collection of films that Channel 5 in New York had thrown into a dumpster in order to make room for newer ones.

The Marshall segment is not the whole interview, he said. “It's just one clip on this footage. It's a two-track negative. The picture was a silent negative and then there was an audio track. Both had to be restored and matched up.”

Gallen has long collected and restored 16mm and 35mm film prints and kinescopes of some of the rarest films, cartoons, news reels and commercials. He is now seeking assistance to save his archives—thousands of films in a warehouse—as well as his digital archives. Take a walk through history at his website.

ICYMI: #GorsuchStyle, Francisco's Error & More

• An update from the court on Sotomayor's surgery: “Justice Sotomayor's surgery this morning went well and the Justice is resting comfortably. She expects to remain in the hospital a night or two.”

• SG Noel Francisco alerted the court about a misstatement he made in the travel ban arguments last week. [Washington Post]

• Jenner & Block's appellate team is honored for a pro bono hat trick at the Supreme Court. [NLJ]

• Good writer or bad? Neil Gorsuch was long heralded for his writing—but the criticism was swift after he joined the Supreme Court. “Why is Gorsuch so divisive even when it comes to something as nerdy as writing style?” Ross Guberman, the legal writing guru asked. “One explanation could be that his writing seems highly personal—not personal in the sense of conversational but personal in the sense that he's trying to call attention to himself.” [NYT]

• Navigating clerkships. The Harvard Crimson takes a dive into some of the challenges law students face. And take a look back at our reporting on the elite world of Supreme Court clerks. We've got all of the story links—snapshots on the diversity picture, law school pipeline and more—on this page.

• Have you seen the new RBG movie? USA Today looks at the evolution of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a pop icon. Check out our earlier report on the movie here.

• Looking back at Antonin Scalia's controversial “long game.” We've got a Q&A herewith Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine.