According to the AP, The Supreme Court on Wednesday once again
refused to order Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube reinserted.
How does the Supreme Court make a ruling so quick on a Wednesday night? Conference call on the telephone?
They left a note with the doorman: if a Schiavo appeal shows up, tell them we decline.
It depends upon the case. In cases where human life is at stake, or where there’s time constraints (like a historic building is scheduled for demolition), those are bumped to the head of the line, in order for the justices to examine the briefs that have been filed. If they find something in the brief which calls for longer study, they will issue a “stay,” in order to prevent the condemned man from being executed or whatever. The stay doesn’t mean that the court will find in favor of the petitioner, only that they need more time to study the case.
I forgot to add that, one justice, will examine the brief, if he thinks that it has merit, he’ll contact the other justices and in some cases, this will be by conference call (they did this alot with Rehnquist since he’s been laid up with cancer).
So, do they fax the appeal to the court? Does a worker bee stay in the building, get the fax and call a justice?
That’s probably close to right.
They had already declined to rule what, 6 times?
Actually, these days they could probably email the appeal. I would imagine that they have a dedicated fax/email addy for appeals and this would be checked by the clerk of courts on a scheduled basis.
It appears that Justice Kennedy got the request for a stay at 9:00 p.m., and that he had referred the request to the entire Court and the Court denied the request by 10:40 p.m. That’s extraordinarily fast for any court, much less the deliberative Supreme Court.
What I suspect is that all of the members of the Supreme Court have been keeping up with the lower court filings in this case. I’m sure that Supreme Court Justices received the 11th Circuit decision as soon as it was issued, and likely had the parties circuit court briefs as well. With this, the Justices would be well aware of what was likely coming.
I would imagine that the court staff would immediately fax or e-mail the Supreme Court motion to the Justices at their homes. I assume that Justice Kennedy would have left word that any stay application in this case would be automatically referred to the whole court.
When they got the papers Justices would probably be able to quickly review them to see that there were no novel issues raised, and either have a conference call or report their votes to the court staff, who would have the standard terse order denying the motion already prepared.
In addition, it would seem that this order would provide little basis for the Supreme Court to change its mind. Today’s 11th Circuit decision was a denial of a motion for rehearing. It essentially said, “we stand by our prior decision.” If the 11th Circuit is standing by its decision, and the Supreme Court has already rejected a stay based on the decision the 11th Circuit is standing by, there is virtually no reason for the Supreme Court to change its mind.
I’m skeptical of emailing the appeal. I was reading the Rules of the Supreme Court online and they have pretty strict rules on how all motions have to be typed out and printed and such. And there are rules for proof of service and all that.
Presumably, if you have an emergency petition, your lawyer knows somebody in Washington, who walks the motion over to the clerk’s office. I would assume that there is some emergency number that you get to call once you are certified as a member of the Supreme Court Bar.
Just guessing.
[slight nitpick]
I’m sure that their **clerks **are keeping up with the lower court filings in this case.
[/slight nitpick]
- Peter Wiggen
A lot of federal courts and all the bankruptcy courts have electronic filing these days. However, I do not know of SCOTUS using the ECF system.
I just read through Rehnquist’s annual report on the U.S. judiciary that came out on January 1 of this year.
In it, he wrote that electronic filing was in place at all Bankruptcy courts and half of the district courts. That would seem to me that it wasn’t in place with the Supreme Court yet.
The Supreme Court can’t get the same volume of cases that a Bankruptcy Court gets, so I would assume that you still have to hand the motion to somebody in person for the time being.
Typically the Supreme Court has very specific filing instructions. You have to bind your petition in a little book with a cover of a specific color and you have to make many copies for specific people. But in emergency cases they may have abbreviated procedures. Anyway, this is such an easy case (this particular petition, anyway) I don’t feel the Court needed to take much time with it.
Oh, and Jplacer, it’s not a “ruling.” It’s a denial of cert, which is explicitly not a ruling, just a decision that the Court isn’t going to consider the matter.
–Cliffy
Come to think of it, there was one case that my old firm was involved with which involved an application for a Supreme Court stay. I wasn’t on the case, and it was a long time ago, so I don’t remember the details.
I do remember one of the lead lawyers on the case coming out of his office with a shocked expression saying, “Justice Scalia’s chambers just called.”
The other side had requested a stay of enforcement of a New Jersey Supreme Court decision, and Justice Scalia wanted an explanation of why the stay shouldn’t be granted. If I recall correctly, this was on a Friday, and he wanted papers by early Monday morning. No doubt those papers would have been faxed to the Supreme Court. In the end, Justice Scalia denied the stay and the Supreme Court declined to review the New Jersey decision.