No Rehnquist Announcement Today

The Court announced its decisions in the remaining six cases of the Term (including the two ten Commandments cases) and recessed for the summer. No announcement that the Chief is stepping down, just as I suspected. I guess the announcement could still happen, through some other means, but nothing today.

BTW, the folks over at SCOTUSblog post interagreement scores for the justices, and just as I thought, the 5-4 voting alignments this Term were all over the place. The Texas Ten Commandments case has to be added in here--Breyer in a special concurrence makes a fifth vote to uphold the display on the state capitol grounds, with Stevens, O'Connor, Souter, and Ginsburg in dissent.

I'm curious to see what the reaction to the Ten Commandments cases will be. My educated guess is that the Christian Right will rail against the Kentucky decision while largely ignoring the Texas case. Justice Scalia's very readable--and, er, quotable--dissent in the Kentucky case will be referred to quite a bit. Quoted a great deal, even. But I am a little curious about Justice Scalia's focus on monotheism. Read the opinion and see if you don't agree . . . .