Supreme Court: Berry v. United States 2026-27 Relist

The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here.Welcome back! The justices returned from their lazy, carefree days of summer recess to tackle the end-of-summer “long conference” on Sept. 28, where they worked through the hundreds of petitions that piled up while they were away. The court has already granted review in three cases from that conference. But, like any good teacher on the first day of class, the justices asked some of the petitions to stay after school.There are exactly 100 cases and applications on the docket for this Friday’s conference, which makes this the rare Relist Watch where the math is easy enough for even a lawyer: 14 of the cases on the docket, or 14%, are actual relists. Thirteen are new, and one is a summer holdover from last term. (I’ll also say a word at the end about seven pro se petitions that have been relisted for reasons that probably have little to do with plenary review, and I haven’t included those in the count.) With that many cases, my treatment will have to be summary.A summer holdoverOnly one relist from the 2025-26 term survived the summer recess: Berry v. United States, which I first discussed in June. Corey Berry asks whether a certificate of appealability should issue when a prisoner’s claim is foreclosed by his own circuit’s precedent but has been accepted by another circuit. The justices considered the case at their

Lawyers tracking Supreme Court cert petitions should note the relisting of *Berry v. United States*, as this indicates the Court is giving serious consideration to the case, potentially leading to a significant ruling on the issuance of certificates of appealability in the context of circuit splits.

Source: Original reporting via SCOTUSblog