The Supreme Court of the United States
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS: What influences how the Supreme Court selects cases, decides cases, and interprets the Constitution? What affects the selection process for Supreme Court justices?
Reading Essentials and Study Guide
Lesson 1 Selecting Cases at the Supreme Court
Read the following scenario to practice hypothesizing/speculating on the difficulty of making the decisions the justices of the Supreme Court face when deciding cases brought before the Court. (If you're not able to print this sheet write your answer and give your reasons on a personal sheet of paper)
Imagine a state has a law that requires all children to attend school until age 16. In that state there is also a religious group that believes children between the ages of 14 and 16 should stay at home, studying the Bible and learning farm work. State officials prosecuted several sets of parents for not sending their children to school. The parents were convicted and fined.The parents believed that the state was violating their rights. The state believed it had the authority to compel attendance at school (or an equivalent educational activity) until age 16.
Should the Supreme Court hear this case and resolve this conflict or should it allow the state to determine the final outcome? Give your reasons.
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Reading HELPDESK
Academic Vocabulary
- primary - first in order of time or development
- uniform - consistent in conduct or opinion
Content Vocabulary
- advisory opinion - a ruling on a law that has not yet been challenged in court
- writ of certiorari - an order from the Supreme Court to a lower court to send up the records on a case for review
- law clerk - an attorney who assists a justice in reviewing cases
- rule of four - an unwritten rule declaring that if four of the nine justices agree to hear a case, it will be scheduled for argument
TAKING NOTES:
Key Ideas and Details
SEQUENCING
As you read The Reading Essentials and Study Guide
Use the numbered blanks/lines below to show the process whereby The Supreme Court cases get selected.
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The Function of the Supreme Court
Guiding Question What is the role of the Supreme Court in our democracy?
The Supreme Court is the highest court in the United States. It is at the top of the judicial branch in our democracy. The Court’s primary (first in order of time or development) function is to resolve disputes that arise over the meaning of federal law and the U.S. Constitution. The Court tries to make sure that federal law is uniform (consistent in conduct or opinion) and means the same thing everywhere in the country.
Judicial review is one of the Supreme Court’s most important powers. Judicial review is the Court’s power to examine the laws and actions of local, state, and national governments. The court can then overturn those actions if they violate the Constitution. The power of judicial review is not mentioned in the Constitution. The Supreme Court first used this power in 1803 in the case of Marbury v. Madison. The justices in that case unanimously ruled that a federal law was unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court can decide what a federal law means or whether it is unconstitutional. The Court can also decide whether a local or state law, a judicial opinion, or an agency decision is unconstitutional. However, the nine justices on the Court cannot simply see a law that is confusing or perhaps unconstitutional and issue an opinion about what the law means. Instead, the justices must usually wait for a trial to be held. The losing party at the trial must appeal the case to at least one higher court. Then the losing party from the appeal may be able to ask the Supreme Court to review the case. This process is different in some other countries where their highest courts can issue advisory opinions. An advisory opinion is a ruling on a law or action that has not yet been challenged in court.
Almost 9,000 cases are appealed to the Supreme Court every year, but the justices only decide about 80 cases each term. This is less than 1 percent of the cases that are appealed to them.
The Court is not required to hear most of the cases appealed to it, but the Court is required to hear federal voting rights cases. For most of the cases appealed to the Court, how does it decide which cases to take?
Reading Progress Check
Summarizing Under what conditions can the Supreme Court hear a case?
(Continue answering this Reading Progress Check question and the ones that follow on the same paper as the scenario questions)
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Choosing Cases
Guiding Question How does the Court decide which cases to hear?
You may have heard of people who lost a trial claiming, “I am going to take my case all the way to the Supreme Court!” They might try to get the Supreme Court to hear their case, but it is not guaranteed that the Court will ever decide their case. The Supreme Court decides which cases it will hear and rule on.
Jurisdiction The Supreme Court has both original and appellate jurisdiction. Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution establishes the Court’s original jurisdiction, which involves two types of cases. The first type is any case that involves representatives of foreign governments, and the second type is any in which a state is a party. The Court’s original jurisdiction may only be changed by constitutional amendment.
Many original jurisdiction cases have involved two states or a state and the federal government. The Supreme Court had original jurisdiction when Maryland and Virginia argued over oyster fishing rights. It also had original jurisdiction when a dispute started between California and Arizona over the control of water from the Colorado River.
The Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction cases form a very small part of its yearly workload. Original jurisdiction cases average fewer than one case per year. Most of the cases the Court decides fall under the Court’s appellate jurisdiction. Appellate comes from the word appeal. The Court hears two kinds of cases under its appellate jurisdiction. The Court hears cases appealed from lower courts of appeal, and it hears cases from federal district courts where an act of Congress was determined to be unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court can also hear cases appealed from the highest court of a state. This can only happen if the case involves claims under federal law or the Constitution. However, the Supreme Court has the authority to rule only on the federal issue involved in these cases. It cannot rule on issues of state law.
Conflicts and Importance The justices are looking for several things when they choose which cases to hear each year. First, they may choose cases where lower courts have decided the same issue in different ways.
Generally the Court does not view its job as correcting errors from lower courts. Instead, the Supreme Court is concerned about ensuring uniformity in decisions about the meaning of the Constitution and the interpretation of federal laws.
The Supreme Court also chooses cases that raise major questions about the law that will have a national impact. The justices believe that these questions must be answered for the good of the country. These cases involve controversial social issues like abortion, privacy, or the death penalty. The cases may also involve issues that have political importance, such as campaign finance. In addition, the Court hears a large number of business cases. These business cases often do not get as much media attention as cases involving social issues. However, these cases can involve billions of dollars and directly affect many people’s lives.
More than half of the cases appealed to the Supreme Court each year come from people in prison who are appealing their criminal convictions. These people must meet two conditions in order to have their cases accepted. First, these people must usually show that their case raises a question about a federal law or the U.S. Constitution. Second, they must show that the question has been answered differently by lower courts. The Supreme Court hears a handful of such cases in a typical year. For example, in 1963, Clarence Gideon appealed his conviction while he was in a Florida state prison. Gideon argued that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed him a right to a lawyer at his trial. He claimed that he had been denied this right. The Court accepted his case and ruled in his favor.
Petitions for Certiorari The party that appeals to the Supreme Court is generally the party who lost in a lower court. They lost in either in a federal circuit court of appeals or in a state supreme court.
The losing party sends the Court a petition for a writ of certiorari in order to appeal. The petition asks the Supreme Court to hear the case and gives reasons they should do so. The petition does not suggest how the Court should decide the case. It only suggests that they should decide the case. For example, the petitioner might argue that two or more federal courts of appeal have ruled that the federal law means two different things. Therefore the Court should hear the case to ensure national uniformity. The petitioner can also take action to emphasize the importance of the case. The petitioner can do this by encouraging others to file an amicus, meaning “friend of the court,” brief that would urge the Court to accept the case.
Solicitor General The U.S. government is often involved in cases that the Supreme Court hears. This can happen if the government is being sued. It can also happen because a federal law is an issue in the case. The solicitor general is the government official who is usually responsible for representing the federal government in court.
The solicitor general decides which cases to appeal to the Supreme Court. He or she also decides how to respond when others appeal a case involving the federal government. The justices will sometimes ask for the solicitor general’s opinion when they are considering whether or not to accept a case. The justices will ask the solicitor general to explain the government’s views about whether or not the Supreme Court should accept the case. The Supreme Court often accepts a case when the solicitor general recommends that they do so.
Selecting Cases to Hear The process of dealing with thousands of petitions for certiorari takes an extremely large amount of the Court’s time. It would be impossible for the justices to carefully review all these petitions and do all their other work. The justices’ law clerks take a major role in reviewing the petitions. The law clerks are typically recent law school graduates who have done exceptional work as law students. They have already clerked for one year at a federal court of appeals. Each justice usually has four law clerks.
The law clerks read every petition. They look for cases that clearly present a federal legal issue that is important and that has divided the lower courts. They do not simply look for a decision that should be reversed or overturned. The law clerks from most of the justices’ chambers work together in a “cert pool.” The cert pool divides up the work of reviewing the petitions and writing summaries of them. Some justices do not participate in the pool. These justices and their law clerks review all the petitions.
The law clerks’ summaries of the cases give the justices a recommendation of whether or not each petition should be granted. The justices meet to decide which cases they will hear. Four of the nine justices must agree to hear a case. The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted when at least four justices agree. This unwritten rule is called the rule of four.
The next step is for the case to be scheduled for argument.For most cases, certiorari is denied. In fact, more than 99 percent of the petitions are denied. The decision of the lower court stands when the Supreme Court refuses to hear a case. This does not necessarily mean that the Supreme Court agrees with the lower court. This just means that the Supreme Court did not choose to hear the case.
Reading Progress Check
Describing What are the different ways that a case can reach the Supreme Court? Which is least common? Why?
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