ACCESS TO THE SUPREME COURT| 373THE COURT SEES MORE OPPORTUNITIES... BUT HEARS FEWER CASES
The Supreme Court’s workload appears to be headed in two directions: the Court is receiving more cases but hearing fewer
of them. What are the implications of having the Supreme Court hear fewer cases? Should something be done to try to get
the Court to hear more cases?FIGURE » 12.3
Sources: Data compiled from “Chief Justice’s Year-End Reports on the Federal Judiciary,” http://www.supremecourtus.gov/publicinfo/year-end/2011year
-endreport.html, and Kedar Bhatia, “Final Term 2011 Stat Pack and Summary Memo,” SCOTUSblog, June 30, 2012, http://www.scotus.blog.com/2012/06/
fi nal-October-term-2011-stat-pack-and-summary-memo (accessed 10/2/12).0204060801001201401601801980 1985 1990 1995Cases Argued before the Court1980 2000 2005 2008 201101000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2008 2010Cases Available for Reviewoften concern water rights).^21 In the history of our nation, only about 175 cases have
made it to the Court through this path, and typically these cases do not have any
broader signifi cance beyond the interest of the parties involved.^22
The other three routes to the Court are all on appeal: as a matter of right (usually
called “on appeal”), through certifi cation, or through the writ of certiorari. Cases “on
appeal” are those that Congress has determined to be so important that the Supreme
Court must hear them. Lately Congress has given the Court much more discretion
on these cases; the only ones that the Court is still compelled to take on appeal are
some voting rights and redistricting cases.
A writ of certifi cation occurs when an appeals court asks the Court to clarify a
new point of federal law in a specifi c case. The Court can agree to hear the case, but
given that appeals court judges and state supreme court judges are the only people
who can make these requests, this path to the Court is very rare. (In fact, since
1982 the Court has not taken up a certifi ed question from one of the appeals courts
and has certifi ed only fi ve cases from state supreme courts.)^23
The third path is the most common: at least 95 percent of the cases in most ses-
sions arrive through a writ of certiorari (from the Latin “to be informed”). In
these cases, a litigant who lost in lower court can fi le a petition to the Supreme
Court explaining why it should hear the case. If four justices agree, the case will
get a full hearing (this is called the “Rule of Four”). This process may sound sim-
ple, but sifting through the 8,000 or so cases that the Court receives every year
and deciding which 85 of them will be heard is daunting. In fact, former justice
William O. Douglas said that this winnowing process is “in many respects the
most important and interesting of all our functions.”^24writ of certiorari The most
common way for a case to reach the
Supreme Court, in which at least
four of the nine justices agree to
hear a case that has reached them
via an appeal from the losing party
in a lower court’s ruling.