In case the politics surrounding the National Labor Relations Board aren’t sufficiently charged these days, the board has emphatically rejected an arbitration agreement that required employees to waive their class action rights, notwithstanding the U.S. Supreme Court’s AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion ruling.

Five current Supreme Court justices have questioned the continued use of the so-called Lemon test for establishment clause violations. But four votes could not be found to revisit it this term in a closely watched religion clause challenge involving memorial crosses to fallen Utah State troopers.

In one of the most highly watched IP cases that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this term, the justices will examine the validity of patents covering personalized medicine.

In the term just ended, the Supreme Court issued 28 CVSGs — calls for the views of the solicitor general — and in the term before that, it asked for 29. Both numbers are significantly higher than usual. So why have those calls come more often lately?

Anthony Brown, who inspired the term “patent troll,” has founded a new “non-practicing entity” called Cascades Ventures, and two of its subsidiaries have already sued Exxon Mobil, Samsung and others for allegedly infringing patents that Cascades began licensing earlier this year.