how does the US supreme court decide which cases it will hear?
I checked an authoritative source, and came up with this information: “The United States Supreme Court is the ultimate court of last resort. While the cases heard by lower level trial courts and appellate courts can be appealed to state supreme courts and federal appellate courts, no other court looks over the shoulder of the U.S. Supreme Court. The opinions issued by the nine justices on this court are final. Every year the U.S. Supreme Court receives thousands of requests to have the high court hear specific cases. Experts estimate that roughly 5000 requests are made annually. These petitions, called writs of certiorari, are essentially pleas stating, “please hear my case.” Each justice on the U.S. Supreme Court has a number of skilled law clerks working for him or her and these clerks review every writ of certiorari and submit a “cert memo” regarding the writs they review to the justice they are assigned.
Here’s a good article about it. One important thing to know is that the Supreme Court almost never grants cert just to correct a mistake made by an individual lower court in a particular case. Instead, the Court looks for well-established “circuit splits” — wide disagreements on a matter of law between appeals courts. “Certworthy” circuit splits are usually clearly acknowledged in the appellate decisions and the academic literature. Court-watchers can also identify certain signs that indicate a case is being seriously considered. For example, after considering a petition the Court may ask the Solicitor General of the United States to “express the views of the United States” on the petition. If the SG recommends granting the peition, that significantly ups the chances.
Also, note that the court can sometimes get quite a lot done by not hearing a case at all. By declining to hear a case, it effectively upholds the lower court ruling, and this strongly suggests that had the court heard the case, it would have upheld it. The Court hates that reasoning. I can’t find any examples at the moment (“cert! /p denial” turns up an awful lot of cert denials on Westlaw), but you will get spanked if you ever argue like that in court. For all the reasons mentioned in this thread, cert granting is a discretionary process and the Court doesn’t even have time for all the cases it DOES want to hear. Anyone who claims the conservatives on the court are steering the court in a radical, anti-moderate direction obviously isn’t familiar with Kelo. Holy hasty generalization. “The liberals came up with one crazy-ass decision so the conservatives aren’t radical!
Just to clarify: The simplest answer is that the Court decides to hear cases when there is a need for a clear national rule in some area of the law. What determines that need varies based on the philosophies of the justices, but it most often depends on whether there is substantial disagreement among the lower federal and state courts. There are a variety of other factors at play, but this is the best way to understand the process. You are in a sense correct, though, given that deciding to hear 80 out of 8000 cases is quite a difficult task, and necessarily leads to some arbitrariness.
In case anyone was dying for a follow-up, the Court did not take action on Osborn v. Haley on Monday and the petition will probably be conferenced again next week. This is another indication that the Court is seriously considering the petition.
