How does the US Supreme Court choose its cases?
The Court has nearly complete discretion. Losing parties file cert petitions, clerks screen them, and at least four of nine justices must vote to hear a case.
AI-drafted from web search results, then checked by a second, independent AI that read 4 of its 4 cited pages in full and found the thread supported. No person has reviewed it.
The short answer
Most cases reach the Supreme Court through a petition for a writ of certiorari, a request from a party that lost in a lower court. The justices have nearly complete discretion over whether to grant it. By tradition, four of the nine justices must vote to take a case, a custom known as the rule of four. Very few petitions succeed: in the 2024 term, 73 of 3,856 petitions, about 1.9 percent, were granted and argued on the merits. [1] [2]
Filing the petition
A cert petition normally must be filed within 90 days of the lower court's final judgment, extendable to 120. The side that won below, the respondent, has 30 days to file a brief arguing against review, and the petitioner may reply 14 days after that. Outside groups can file friend-of-the-court briefs urging review. The Court's rules treat the civil deadline as mandatory and jurisdictional, while the criminal deadline can in theory be relaxed, though that rarely happens. [1]
Two kinds of cases fall outside this discretion. Original jurisdiction cases, such as disputes between states, go straight to the Court. A handful of cases, such as certain redistricting rulings by three-judge district courts, fall under mandatory appellate jurisdiction, so the justices must act on them. Discretion over the docket largely dates to the Judiciary Act of 1925, which Chief Justice William Howard Taft pushed for. [1]
Screening and conference
Law clerks, usually recent law school graduates, summarize each petition. According to SCOTUSblog, seven of the nine current justices take part in a cert pool, in which one clerk writes a memo with an initial recommendation that is shared among the participating chambers. Justices Alito and Gorsuch do not use the pool, and their clerks review all petitions themselves. [3] [1]
Any justice can ask for a petition to be placed on the discuss list for the private conference. If none does, the petition goes on the dead list and is denied without discussion or a vote. Conferences are closed to everyone but the justices. Those that reach conference are decided there, and the Court then publishes orders listing the grants and denials. A denial leaves the lower court's decision in place and does not signal agreement with it. [1] [4]
What makes a petition succeed
The justices publish no criteria and rarely explain denials. The most reliable path is a circuit split, where federal appeals courts disagree on the same legal question, because the Court sees its role as settling unresolved law rather than correcting errors. An analysis by Adam Feldman of more than 12,300 paid petitions from 2017 through 2024 found other factors that raise the odds: repeated relists, experienced Supreme Court counsel on both sides, and three or more cert-stage amicus briefs. SCOTUSblog's explainer concludes that the choice is more art than science. [1]
Sources
- How the justices decide … which cases to decide: an explainer (scotusblog.com) Found by source search. Not checked by a person.
- 9.5 Info Brief: How Does a Case Get to the Supreme Court (constitutioncenter.org) Found by source search. Not checked by a person.
- How the Supreme Court Decides Which Cases to Hear | The Pew Charitable Trusts (pew.org) Found by source search. Not checked by a person.
- How the Supreme Court decides its cases — a step‑by‑step guide | PBS News (pbs.org) Found by source search. Not checked by a person.
Questions to follow next
- What is the rule of four and where did it come from?
- What happens after the Court agrees to hear a case?
- Why does the Court deny most petitions without explanation?