"The liberal justices, or at least their leader, Justice Stevens, may well have decided that refraining at this point was the wiser course...."

Linda Greenhouse has a theory about yesterday's cert. denial in Guantanamo detainees cases (Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States). Noting that Justice Stevens declined to vote along with Justices Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer and that while four votes are needed to hear a case, five are needed to decide it, she writes:

The liberal justices, or at least their leader, Justice Stevens, may well have decided that refraining at this point was the wiser course, given the risk that the case might come out the “wrong” way, from their point of view, with an affirmation of the appeals court’s decision that would then become a hard and fast Supreme Court precedent.