There are not quite as many cases as last year, but 2008-2009 could be a blockbuster year for Supreme Court labor and employment law cases.
BNA Daily Labor Report provides some context:
The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to open its 2008-2009 term Oct. 6 with six labor and employment law cases awaiting oral argument.
This [i.e., engaging in the conversation started in this post] wasn’t where I’d planned to start, but since I’ve got some thoughts on the scholarship-practice divide I might as well add my two cents. I spent just over eight years in practice before entering academia, so I have some understanding for the practitioner perspective. My firm maintained subscriptions to many of the top law reviews, which I would browse as time permitted. My reactions ranged from “wow that’s really interesting!” to “wow that’s complete ivory tower BS!” to “you know, I think I can actually use that!” And use them I did. I distinctly recall, for example, discussing Alan Michaels’ “Constitutional Innocence” article in the Harvard Law Review at oral argument before the Minnesota Court of Appeals. Nobody laughed.
So I think there’s plenty of scholarship, even work done at relatively high levels of abstraction, that can be put to work in practice.
In a post earlier in the week, Jessica Price highlighted Fastcase, the online legal database that will soon be available to members of the Wisconsin State Bar at no additional cost. The Marquette Law Library explored Fastcase over the summer and is in the final integration stages of a subscription that will allow law students and law faculty access to the complete Fastcase database.