The Supreme Court will issue rulings sometime after 10 a.m. Eastern on Thursday on a few of the 14 remaining cases on its 2012-13 schedule. The court may â€" or may not â€" release decisions on one or more of its four most-watched decisions remaining, concerning affirmative action, the Voting Rights Act and same-sex marriage (the subject of two cases). We want to give readers an overview of The Times’s coverage if one of the major rulings does come down on Thursday.
We realize that people will be eager to know what a ruling means as soon as it comes out (and you can read the decision yourself when it is posted on the court’s Web site). But we also want to point out that the immediate descriptions of any ruling may not be very meaningful.
For one thing, a ruling could be complicated, as were last year’s health-care ruling and the 2000 Bush v. Gore ruling, and not amenable to instant summarizing. The court could even announce one portion of a deciion â€" especially on same-sex marriage, given the two different cases â€" before it releases another portion.
Dozens of Times journalists, in Washington, New York and around the country, are covering the ruling and the reaction to it by the public and those affected by it. At the center of the coverage is Adam Liptak, the Supreme Court reporter (and a lawyer) of The Times, who will be in court to hear the ruling.
We plan to explain the ruling the moment we feel comfortable with its basic meaning â€" which could be almost immediately. We promise not to bombard you with guesswork or unintelligible legal technicalities. The Times will also run blog posts from the legal experts at SCOTUSblog on our own site, as well as ask other outside experts to help readers understand the decision. Once the fundamentals of the ruling are clear, Times reporters and editors will be analyzing it in real time, on our live blog dedicated to the ruling and on stories ap! pearing across our digital platforms. We will also post updates to Twitter on @thecaucus and @nytimes, and post selected reactions from readers.
We expect to have Mr. Liptak’s initial story about any ruling by late morning or shortly after noon, not long after the court’s session has ended. Whatever happens Thursday, we also expect at least one major ruling to come next week.
Thanks for being with us.
