Access to the Supreme Court 505Although there is no definitive answer as to how active the Senate should be
in giving “advice and consent,” it is clear that the Founders intended the Senate
to play an active role. The first draft of the Constitution gave the Senate the
sole power to appoint Supreme Court justices. However, the final version made
appointment a shared power with the president. It was not expected that the Senate
would compete with the president over whom to nominate, but it was assumed
that the Senate would exercise independent judgment as to the suitability of the
president’s nominees.“Why
Should
I Care?”
It is safe to assume that most Americans do not follow the details of battles over
court nominations. However, these battles are every bit as important as the elections
that do capture much attention. Unelected judges often serve for 20 or 30 years,
much longer than the average member of Congress, and have the power to strike
down laws that Congress passes. Confirmation battles also support our argument
that politics is conflictual and that we should expect it to be that way. The Founders
certainly did not expect that the process would be free of politics or that the Senate
would be an essentially passive and subordinate player in a nominally joint enterprise.
Even George Washington had two of his nominations turned down by the Senate for
political reasons. Therefore, politics will continue to play an important role in deciding
who serves on the federal bench.Access to the Supreme Court
It is extremely difficult to have a case heard by the Supreme Court. Currently the Court
hears just over 1 percent of the cases submitted (71 of 6,305 cases in the most recent
completed term).^30 This section explains how the Court decides which cases to hear.
When a case is submitted, the clerk of the Court assigns it a number and places it on the
docket, which is the schedule of cases.The Court’s Workload
Statistics on the Supreme Court’s workload initially suggest that the size of the
docket has increased dramatically since the 1970s (see Figure 14.3). However, a
majority of cases are frivolous and are dismissed after limited review. The Court
has become increasingly impatient with these frivolous petitions and has moved to
prevent “frequent filers” from harassing the Court. One often-cited case involved
Michael Sindram, who asked the Court to order the Maryland courts to remove a $35
traffic ticket from his record. Our favorite example concerned a wealthy drug dealer,
Frederick W. Bauer, who was convicted on 10 counts of dealing drugs and petitioned
the Court 12 times on various issues. The justices finally had enough and directed “the
Clerk not to accept any further petitions for certiorari or petitions for extraordinary
writs from Bauer in noncriminal matters” unless he paid his docketing fees. They
concluded that the order will allow this Court to focus on “petitioners who have not
abused our processes.”^31DESCRIBE HOW CASES
REACH THE SUPREME
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