What Cases Go to the Supreme Court

Although each judge has the prerogative to read each petition for certiorari himself/herself, many participate in what is informally called a “pool of certainty.” Since applications for certiorari are received weekly, they are distributed among participating judges. Participating judges distribute their requests among their trainee lawyers. The trainee lawyers, in turn, read the petitions assigned to them, write a brief memorandum on the case and make a recommendation as to whether or not to accept the case. The judge makes these briefs and recommendations available to the other judges at a conference of judges. Supreme Court cases come in three variations. The fewest are “jurisdiction of origin” lawsuits brought by one state against another or between states and the federal government. The Constitution also empowers the Court to “hear all cases involving ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls.” In these cases, the Court of Justice sits as a procedural body against which no appeal may be brought. In addition to adjudicating these cases, each judge is responsible for urgent petitions and other matters from one or more of the 13 federal districts. As a result, judges are sometimes asked to stop the execution of a district court order, fix bail for an accused or stop the deportation of an alien. Judges also deal with requests for stays of execution. Only a few cases from the court of origin are filed – usually one to five per warrant – but the very mass makes many of them difficult. In 1952, Arizona sued California to obtain water from the Colorado River. The completed process report was over 26,000 pages long.

Briefs and other documents filed by States took 4,000 more. The judges heard 16 hours of oral proceedings in the autumn of 1961 and another six hours in November 1962. Arizona won the court`s decision in 1963. Supreme Court justices hear oral arguments and decide cases that have been granted certiorari. These are usually controversial cases brought before lower courts of appeal. The court receives between 7,000 and 8,000 applications per quarter and hears oral arguments in about 80 cases. After the filing of the first claims, the plaintiff and the defendant may file briefs of shorter length corresponding to the respective position of the other party. If not directly involved in the matter, the U.S. government, represented by the Attorney General, may file a brief on behalf of the government. With the court`s permission, groups that have no vested interest in the outcome of the case, but are nonetheless interested in it, can file a so-called amicus curiae (Latin for “friend of the court”) in which they set out their own arguments and recommendations for deciding the case. The Registrar of the Supreme Court is the official of the court responsible for auditing documents submitted to the court and keeping its records.

This person has been in office since 1789 with congressional authorization and can be removed by order of the Supreme Court. Once the applications for certiorari have been processed, the judges begin to discuss the cases that have been heard since their last conference. According to the Supreme Court transcript, all judges have the opportunity to express their views on the case and to express questions or concerns. Each judge speaks about the others without interruption. The Chief Justice makes the first statement, then each judge speaks in descending order of seniority and ends with the lowest judge – the one who has served the fewest years on the court. Parties who are not satisfied with a lower court`s decision must go to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case. The main way to ask the court to review is to ask the court to issue a writ of certiorari.

This is a request that the Supreme Court orders a lower court to send the case file for review. The Court is generally not required to hear these cases, and it usually does so only if the case may be of national importance, harmonize conflicting decisions in the federal courts and/or have precedential value. In fact, the Court accepts 100 to 150 of the more than 7,000 cases it is asked to consider each year. Typically, the court hears cases decided either before a U.S. court of appeals or before the highest court in a particular state (if the state court has ruled on a constitutional question). Article III of the Constitution of the United States states: “The judicial authority of the United States shall be vested in a Supreme Court and such lower courts as Congress may from time to time prohibit and administer.” But what does the U.S. Supreme Court do and how do its decisions affect the citizens of this country? “The Supreme Court has room for about 80 oral arguments in this legislature,” said Steve Wermiel, a law professor at the CMT, who moderated the discussion and noted that he expected the court to use only about 60 of those available slots. When the court opened on October 1, the list currently includes 43 cases. How long do you argue before the Supreme Court? Typically, each party has 30 minutes of reasoning to convince judges that their interpretation of the law is correct. Almost all the cases judges hear are reviews of the decisions of other courts – there are no jurors or witnesses.