Inside the Supreme Court

Petition to Decision

Papers of Supreme Court Justices on Civil Rights Cases

David Achtenberg

Professor & Law Foundation Scholar

UMKC School of Law

Kansas City, MO 64110-2499

816-235-2382

AchtenbergD@umkc.edu

Owen v. City of Independence

Timeline

          Coverage:  This page is a chronological timeline of the Court’s internal discussion and handling of Owen from the petitioner's earliest filings through the announcement of the decision in the case.  The timeline is divided into four sections which can be accessed through the buttons above or the ones in the yellow navigation area.

         Accessing Documents:  Each event is linked to all the documents in the Blackmun, Brennan, Marshall, Powell, and White files (as well as some documents from additional sources) that relate to that event.  To access a document, click on its link.  In the illustration below, you would click the link indicated by the red arrow to access the copy of Justice Powell's Opinion log that was found in his files.  (The links do not work on this illustration which is not from the Owen files.  To experiment, go to the timeline itself.) 

          Duplicate Documents:  When more than one copy of a document was found, I have included and linked all copies.  When a particular justice’s copy of a document contains additional annotations or markings, the link to that copy ends with an asterisk.   In the illustration above, the asterisks at the end of the circled entries indicate that both Justice Marshall and Justice Powell (or their clerks) made notes on their respective copies of the first draft of Justice Brennan's majority opinion.

         Transcripts:   Where I have prepared a transcription of a handwritten document, a link to the transcript is provided in red immediately after the document link. For example, in the illustration below, you would click on the link indicated by the red arrow to view a high resolution copy of Justice Blackmun's Conference Notes, and you would click on the red "Transcript" link to view my transcription of that document.  (The links do not work in this illustration which is not from the Owen files.  To experiment, go to the timeline itself.)

          Abbreviations:  I have abbreviated the names of the justices, their clerks, and a few other persons.  A key to all abbreviations can be accessed by clicking the abbreviations button in the yellow navigation area. 

          Dates:  If the date of an event is unclear, estimated or derived, the date is underlined and the date is linked to an explanation. 

          Higher Resolution Copies:  Most of the documents are presented in comparatively small pdf files which should be adequate for most uses.  Please let me know if you think that any particular image needs to be replaced with a higher resolution version.  I will also be happy to send higher resolution copies (or original JPEGs) of any images to anyone who needs them.  For further information about how the documents were photographed, edited and converted to pdf files, click here to go to the Image Creation and Conversion Protocol Page. 

          Sources and Citation:  For an explanation of how to determine the original archive location of any document, click here to go to the Document Source Page.

Owen Timeline—Part 1
Deciding to Grant Review: First Filings to Grant of Certiorari (4/9/79-10/1/79)
Event	Date	HAB	WJB	TM	LFP	PS	BRW	Other
Petitioner files motion for extension of time	04/09/79							Docket
HAB grants Extension of Time  to 5/29/79	04/09/79							Docket
Cert Petition filed	05/29/79							Cert Petition
								Docket
Brief in Opposition filed	06/22/79							Brief in Opposition
								Docket
Cert Petition distributed for Summer List	06/27/79							Docket
RTH circulates Pool Memo	07/03/79	Pool Memo*			Pool Memo*
LFP & PBS annotate Pool Memo	uncertain				Pool Memo*
AGL annotates Pool Memo for HAB	07/09/79	Pool Memo*
		Memo AGL to HAB
HTG writes certiorari memo for PS tentatively recommending that cert be granted	07/16/79					Memo HTG to PS
PS annotates conference list indicating tentative decision to vote to deny certiorari	09/17/79					Conference List
WEB writes memo to conference indicating that JPS has requested that Owen be put on the discuss list.	09/21/79					Memo WEB to Conference
Discussed in conference and Court grants cert 5-4 with WJB, PS, BRW, TM and JPS to grant.  (TM may have initially voted to "join 3."  WJB's own docket indicates he voted to deny but PS's indicates that he voted to grant, and HAB's indicates he first passed and then voted to grant.)	09/24/79		WJB Docket (Vote Record)	HAB Docket	LFP Docket	PS Docket
Grant of cert ordered and docketed	10/01/79							Docket
WEB circulates handwritten memo attaching revised assignment list.  (attachment not found)	10/08/79					Memo WEB to Conference