Oh! I'm surprised at myself, forgetting the first Monday of October! Did anyone notice the actual Supreme Court cranked back into gear today?

The empty seat is so interesting that maybe you, like me, forgot to hail the return of the actual Supreme Court today. I'd given in a thought now and then, maybe last week, but it slipped my mind today until just now.

Here's Joan Biskupic at CNN, noting the return of the Court, but forefronting the unfilled seat: "An empty space and an idle microphone: The Supreme Court returns."

The associate justices repositioned their tall black chairs on the two sides of Roberts, in their new order of alternating seniority without Kennedy... At the end of the bench, where the new justice would sit, was an empty space and idle microphone.

In their first case, testing the reach of federal environmental law, the eight appeared to be dividing along familiar ideological and political lines, conservatives versus liberals.... [T]he high court [might fail] to set a national standard on some bubbling controversies, whether regarding the Endangered Species Act, in dispute Monday, or related to a Tuesday case brought by a Death Row inmate with dementia, when elderly convicts may be exempt from capital punishment....

In a practical vein, 4-4 splits may not be the only consequence for a shorthanded court. Without a full slate of justices, they may also avoid taking up substantial new questions, as happened when the Senate had stalled on Obama nominee Judge Merrick Garland. Among the contentious issues currently pending for possible review is whether federal law prohibiting sex discrimination covers bias based on sexual orientation and gender identity....