In NationalJournal.com's poll of several Supreme Court observers, the Ricci v. DeStefano discrimination case and the Maloney v. Cuomo Second Amendment case were judged most likely to face scrutiny. The 10 experts in the survey seem to be on the same page as Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who has included on his list of witnesses two plaintiffs from the Ricci case -- Frank Ricci and Ben Vargas -- as well as former National Rifle Association President Sandy Froman.

The experts are split right down the middle as to whether Republicans will seek a delay. They all agree on one thing, though: The move wouldn't succeed, considering the large Democratic majority.

NationalJournal.com asked the experts to rank what issues, out of the following seven, Republican senators will likely focus on: Ricci; Maloney; the Didden v. Village of Port Chester property rights case; Sotomayor's involvement with a Puerto Rican civil rights group; her "wise Latina woman" comment; her remark that Court of Appeals is "where policy is made"; and abortion.

We then weighted the responses, with seven points for a first-place selection down to one point for seventh place. When respondents didn't rank issues, we simply didn't give those issues a point.

Not surprisingly, Ricci was at the top of most experts' lists: six out of 10, with a total of 58 points. The Maloney case (a three-judge panel opinion Sotomayor sat on that affirmed a lower court's ruling that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to the states) came in second with 49 points. The other race-oriented issues -- her "wise Latina woman" remark and her involvement in the group now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF -- were the next most popular ones, coming in with 41 and 37 points, respectively. Despite abortion's traditional role as a hot-button judicial issue, it came in last with only 20 points. Most experts listed it last or not at all.

Poll respondents were: Dahlia Lithwick, Slate senior editor; Paul Cassell, University of Utah law professor and Volokh Conspiracy blogger; Tom Goldstein, founder of SCOTUSblog and Supreme Court litigator at Akin Gump; Adam White, D.C. lawyer; William Marshall, University of North Carolina law professor; Doug Kendall, founder and president of the Constitutional Accountability Center; Cristina Rodriguez, New York University law professor; Carl Tobias, University of Richmond law professor; Wendy Long, general counsel for the Judicial Confirmation Network; and National Journal's own Stuart Taylor Jr. In order to encourage frank and open speculation, contributors were given anonymity.

After the jump, see experts' explanations for their rankings, divided up by issue, and their comments on whether the GOP will seek a delay.