Many jurisdictions have separate courts of last resort for various areas of law: There are courts specialized on penal affairs, administrative law, civil litigation, constitutional complaints, and all this. In many cases, there’s one supreme court on top of each of these branches, and even then this supreme court is divided into a number of chambers, sometimes dozens of them, among which incoming cases are distributed.
Not so the US Supreme Court. It’s just this one chamber of nine justices, being the court of last resort for everything concerning US law. I know it only decides cases involving federal law, so the matters of state law are done by the various supreme courts of the singe states. Yet I think those federal matters alone account for truckloads of work for which other jurisdictions would employ hundreds of judges in dozens of chambers in half a dozen different courts. How come the SCOTUS is able to cope with all this?
It’s not just nine justices in a single chamber. Each justice employs a staff of assistants; these are law school graduates who do the grunt work, so to speak.
Moreover, the SCOTUS is rarely the court of original jurisdiction. This means that the Court hears arguments; they don’t hear testimony from witnesses or get evidence. They review existing documents (although these can be a full truckload for just one case) and hear arguments, then make their decision. Each side gets 30 minutes, period, to make their case and answer questions from the justices.
They also don’t hear every case. The petitioner has to apply for a writ of certiorari, the Court has to grant that writ for them to hear the case. They deny a lot more cases than they hear.
Here is the SCOTUS website. It has fact sheets on the Court and its operations.
I’m unfamiliar with the Supreme Courts of other states, but in MD the Court of Appeals (the highest court in the state) consists of only 7 Judges to whom all incoming cases are sent. I assume that if not all, a majority of state supreme courts also function in a similar manner.
The simple answer to the whole question though is * discretionary jurisdiction * . The Supreme Court is almost entirely an appellate court rather than a court of original jurisdiction. Accordingly it can pick and chose which petitions to accept and which to deny. Thus, a vast majority of the thousands of petitions are denied. The past few years I believe the docket has been under a 100, I don’t have a cite for an exact number, but I’m sure someone will appear with one. Generally, cases involving bankruptcy, tax questions and incompetent council have a very slim chance of being selected.
Occasionally a case will appear in which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction, generally cases involving states having legal disputes with other states, the Supreme Court will simply assign a special master who will oversee the majority of the proceedings.
To assist the court in this undertaking each justice has a few clerks who assist by preparing written briefs on all of the cases as well as drafting the justice’s opinions.
Schnitte, I guess you’re coming from a Contenental European perspective, where there are different court systems for the various different areas you mention.
In contrast the Anglo-American system is generally a unitiary heirarchy of courts.
Most U.S. States and the U.S. federal system have a single court of general civil and criminal jurisdiction, which can handle virtually all serious crimes and civil matters. In the federal system, this is the U.S. District Court. The state courts of general jurisdiction have a variety of names, but Superior Court is common. I believe the U.K. equivalent is the High Court.
There are also lower courts of specialized jurisdiction (e.g. state: family court, probate court, traffic court, small claims court; federal: banrkruptcy court, tax court), but these usually feed into the general appeals courts (or sometimes are appealable to the courts of general jurisdiction).
Most U.S. States have an intermediate appellate court, which hears appeals from courts of general jurisdiction and some of the specialized courts. In many states, these courts are divided into geographic regions. In the federal system, there is a U.S. Court of Appeal for each of 13 judicial circuits. I believe the U.K. intermediate appeal court is also called the Court of Appeal.
Most States also have a Supreme Court (sometimes differently named) which hears appeals from the intermediate appeals courts, and sometimes direct appeals (often in death penalty cases). There is, of course, the U.S. Supreme Court, which hears appeals from state courts of last resort (but only on questions of federal law) and the federal Courts of Appeal. The U.K equivalent is the House of Lords.
The thing that keeps most high Courts’ workloads managable is that the generally only hear appeals of cases they select. The U.S. Supreme Court has in its Rules of Court (pdf file) guidelines on the cases it will accept through a Writ of Certorari:
In other words, the U.S. Supreme Court sees its job as mainly resolving conflicts among lower courts, not correcting mistakes of lower courts. Because it limits its docket, the caseload keeps the Court very busy but not overwhelmed.
This system seems like it could be improved by splitting the Supreme Court (state and federal) into two or more specialized courts. The way it is now, the justices must be well-versed in all areas of law and are limited in the number of cases they can hear.
Why not split the high court into a Civil Supreme Court and Criminal Supreme Court with 9 justices on each court?
A recent editorial in the Washington Post pointed out that the Supreme Court has been accepting fewer cases in recent years than it once did: about 70 per year now, as opposed to 100 thirty years ago.
Surely the number of cases brought to them is not going down with time — because of the nation’s population growth if nothing else — so they must be rejecting a much larger fraction of cases now. I hope this means they’re putting “more work” (whatever that might mean) into the cases they do accept. But along with the OP, I’d be curious to know what they’re up to. Or not up to, as it might be.
I believe that Texas has split its appellate jurisdiction into a Court of Criminal Appeals (for criminal matters, no surprise) and a Supreme Court (for civil matters).
I’m not a Texan, and I don’t really know the history or politics of the split in courts. However, my perception is that the reason for the split is that Texas (which elects its judges) wanted to limit the power of those brainy (or perhaps well-rounded) Supreme Court justices to interfere with the criminal law prosecutions and to allow criminal appeals to stop at a court where the judges could campaign on their propensity to “hang 'em high.”
As for the majority of jurisdictions with unitary civil/criminal jurisdiction, I suppose the reasons that they don’t change include inertia (or perhaps don’t fix what ain’t broken), a reluctance to undergo the cost and expense of setting up two parallel systems, and the fact that there is often a great deal of overlap of legal issues between civil and criminal litigation. As one example, most of the rules of evidence apply equally in civil and criminal matters. As another, these days many statutes provide that a violator may be subject to criminal prosecution, adminstrative action (e.g. a license revocation or civil penalty), and/or private litigation for the very same conduct. Having one court that can set the definitive rules for these overalpping areas helps avoid fragmentation of the law.
So it’s mostly selection of which appeal are dealt with by the Supreme Court and which are not. Interesting, and thanks for the answers.
I’d just like, for sake of completeness, to line out the situation in Germany. There are five branches of jurisdiction (civil/criminal, tax, welfare affairs, administrative affairs escluding tax and welfare, and employment affairs), each of which has its own inferior courts and its own supreme court, and those supreme courts usually consist of a variety of chambers among which cases are distributed. Additionally, there are constitutional courts on the state and federal levels. And each of those courts consist of several chambers, sometimes more than a dozen of them.
Another wrinkle is that in the United States we also have administrative courts for various areas, including bankruptcy, welfare matters, and employment affairs, which are considered part of the federal agencies whose regulations they administer. The decisions of these administrative tribunals can be appealed to “real” courts.
For comparison’s sake, the U.S. Supreme Court sits as one panel of all nine justices, unless one or more recuse themselves (e.g. on a conflict of interest), do not participate because of illness or disability, or the seat is vacant.
The U.S. Courts of Appeals generally sit in panels of three judges, chosen from among the 6 to 28 regular judges assigned, depending on circuit, plus an unlimited number of senior judges (essentially, retired judges who agree to continue to serve). In addition, other federal judges may be temporarily designated to serve on Court of Appeals panels. Sometimes, a full Court of Appeals (known as the Court en banc) will agree to rehear an appeal on a particular controversial area of law.
Most state judiciaries follow a similar pattern, with state high court cases being heard by the whole court, and different numbers of judges and divisions of court in the intermediate appellate courts, depending on the amount of judicial business.
Changing the nature and jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court would take a lot of people agreeing to the change: Congress, the Courts, the states, special interest groups, the President, and the collective wisdom of the SDMB.
You would never be able to get anyone to agree to a change of this type. We’re Americans, we don’t like to tinker with the Supreme Court. We just like to complain about it.
The catholic jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is one of its great virtues – this way, legal questions that present similar issues can be decided in harmony with each other and there are no turf wars at the highest levels like there were at common law, when it was often impossible to know whether certain conduct was going to get you into legal trouble or not. Plus, the system you suggest would be unworkable, IMO, as lots of issues would arise in both the civil and criminal context. Also, probably unconstitutional – the Constitution says that the judicial power of the U.S. shall be vested in a supreme court and such other courts as Congress shall establish. Ergo, a court which is supreme must exist, not two co-equal courts that both have the word “supreme” in the title.
That’s a huge part of it, but I would hesitate to say “mostly.” Even with the exercise of discretionary review, it’s a huge job just to determine which of those cases are to be granted certiorari and which aren’t, not to mention the researching and drafting of those cases where cert is granted. The Justices have two other tools at their disposal to deal with the still huge caseloads they have: long hours, and law clerks. For every one justice you see, there are four nameless law clerks behind the scenes busting their asses for low pay.
Federal judges are allowed by law to employ law clerks to help assist them in the duties of their chambers. Generally, U.S. District Judges will have two law clerks, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judges will have three, and U.S. Supreme Court Justices will have four. Law clerks, especially those at the U.S. Supreme Court level, are typically selected for one or two year terms from the cream of the crop of new law school graduates, and hold an astonishing amount of power for what arguably amounts to a bunch of overachieving newbies. Oliver Wendell Holmes once referred to his clerks as his “puisne judges,” and it’s really not so far from true; law clerks really do have positions tantamount to being an assistant judge. Most of the justices now have law clerks routinely research and write the initial drafts of their opinions, and do a variety of other tasks like monitoring cert and keeping a watch on death penalty timetables.
Plus, given the nature of people, who want to push as hard as they can to get their way, there would have to be a final, really last, SUPREME decision-maker about what is constitutional and what isn’t. I doubt that it would be easy or even possible to exactly divide up what the jurisdictions would be between these two equal level courts. If someone wasn’t happy with a criminal decision, they’d probably start scheming for a way to bring up a civil-type appeal.
I was aware of this, but I seem to recall in a recent article about Judge Roberts that he served with only two other clerks during his tenure as clerk under Justice Rehnquist. Has there been an increase, or am I misremembering?
Nope, you’re not misremembering, nor has there been a recent increase in the number of clerks permitted. Each justice may hire up to four law clerks. Chief Justice Rehnquist traditionally has hired only three. Anecdotally, that’s because he only needs three clerks to have even numbers for a game of doubles tennis. A quick googling of “rehnquist doubles tennis” turns up many news articles containing this speculation about the Chief Justice (and others containing speculation about likely-unrelated Swedish tennis player Bjorn Rehnquist).
