Good morning and welcome to Supreme Court Brief! If the justices thought they would ease into Thanksgiving this week, the news held other surprises. Justice Alito is at the center of an allegation that the result of the 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was leaked while the case was pending. Some Senate Democrats are calling for an investigation and for the passage of a Supreme Court ethics code. Meanwhile, the justices have been dealing with a flurry of last-minute death penalty applications. We have details. And the Insular Cases appear to be here to stay. Scroll down for more on the 2014 leak and questions about Justice Barrett's impartiality in the upcoming First Amendment LGBTQ argument.

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Death penalty demonstrators outside of the U.S. Supreme Court. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

Death Decisions

November usually hosts the first opinion or opinions of the court in argued cases. Although the month doesn't end until next week, the court is lagging behind earlier terms at this point as well as in its pace of new grants. But that doesn't mean the justices haven't been busy.

The justices have handled a flurry of emergency applications in the past five days from death row inmates facing imminent execution. Death cases don't attract the national headlines that they once did, perhaps because support for the death penalty continues to decrease nationally. But last week was a reminder that a core group of states still use the death penalty.