I’ve just learned that the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in two cases that I’ll be interested to watch this term. In the first, Davis v. U.S. (09-11328), the Court will decide whether the rule announced in Arizona v. Gant (2009)–that police cannot search a car just because someone who has been arrested was sitting in it before the arrest–applies retroactively to cases pending on appeal at the time Gant was decided. In the second, J.D.B. v. North Carolina, the Court will consider whether police should have given a 13-year-old special education student Miranda warnings before they questioned him at school in a closed conference room about a recent crime. The interesting philosophic question involved in this case is whether a suspect’s age should be considered when deciding whether the atmosphere of the interrogation was such that it should have been considered custodial–thus triggering the Miranda requirement–even though it occurred at a school.