has me wondering why, or maybe how, does the SCotUS just refuse cases. IMHO, the NY law is an attack on the 1st amendment right to peaceable assemble, but the SCotUS does not even want to hear the case, allowing NY to maintain this law. Isn’t one of the roles of the SCotUS to determine if state laws are a violation of the US constitution and strike them down if they are? What gives them the right to refuse cases?
The right of appeal exists from one court to another according to the rules of practice established in a given jurisdiction. E.g., you cannot take your parking ticket up to the highest court of a state just because you feel bitchy about it; you must have reasonable grounds for arguing that it was invalidly issued, an unfair application of the law (e.g., ten people parked on the street, but the cop, between you and whom there is a longstanding grudge, ticketed only your car), etc.
With vanishingly rare exceptions, there is no right of appeal to SCOTUS. (It does exist, but the circumstances under which it may be invoked are highly improbable; perhaps someone with detailed knowledge of SCOTUS rules might care to describe this further.)
Rather, cases come to SCOTUS under five mechanisms. Ignoring its original jurisdiction, writs of error, certification by a lower court, and appeal are so vanishingly rare that they may be disregarded. Nearly every case considered by SCOTUS gets there by certiorari – the granting of a petition by SCOTUS from an appellant that it undertake review of a lower court’s decision. The case must be ripe, not moot, and in general all other avenues of appeal exhausted, before such a case will be considered. (Rarely the Circuit Courts or the highest court of a state will be bypassed in a case with major national consequences – Nixon v. U.S., the “Watergate tapes” case, is an example of something brought directly from U.S. District Court to SCOTUS.)
In short, SCOTUS does not reject appeals, but chooses from the thousands of petitions for certiorari the ones that it believes to have an important reason for review – a serious Constitutional question, a difference of opinion between Circuit Courts, or a requirement that a national statute be construed equably across the country. Only about one case in 25 (last estimate I read; I don’t vouch for the accuracy of the number) will be “granted cert” and heard by the Supremes.
Really briefly, the Supreme Court operates under two different standards of jurisdiction…original jurisdiction, where a case goes directly to the Supreme Court, and appelate jurisdiction, where a case is decided by another court, then the losing side appeals the case to the Supremes. This case relies on the court’s appelate jurisdiction. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law was constitutional, and now the Klan is appealing that decision.
But the thing is, the Supreme Court doesn’t have to accept appeals. They can look at the appeal and say, “Nah, you haven’t shown us any good reason the lower court’s decision should be overturned. We’re not going to waste our time on this.”
Although I don’t disagree with Cap’n Amazing’s answer, it’s only correct if we’re speaking in non-technical terms. Technically, the Court must hear cases which come to it thru “appeal.” However, as Poly notes, those are very few. The vast majority of the cases on the Court’s docket reach it thru a petition for a writ of certiorari from a state supreme court or a lower federal court. These cases will only be heard if the Court deems them important enough to grant said petition.
With some exception, basically any case which is impacted by federal law can spawn a petition for cert., but the Court grants only a handful (less than a hundred a year out of the thousands that are requested). Although a cert. pet. is not technically an appeal, the term “appeal” is frequently used in a non-technical sense (even amongst lawyers) for any process by which a higher court reviews the decision of a lower one; in this sense, the term embraces the concept of certiorari.
The most common type of case which is appealable (not petitionable) is any one that’s heard by a three-judge panel of a District Court (the first-level federal trial court). There are various statutes that require cases brought thereunder be heard by a 3-judge panel and, therefore, allow immediate appeal as of right to the SupCt (last year’s McCain-Feingold campaign finance law being the most recent example). However, there are very few of these statutes left on the books, so that part of the Court’s jurisdiction is rarely invoked (usually no more than a few times a year, and frequently less than that).
In certiorari cases, under current Supreme Court rules, four justices must vote in favor of hearing a case before it is put on the docket. In rare cases, a Justice or Justices will publish a dissent from the denial of certiorari, and in extremely rare cases, a Justice will publish a dissent from the granting of cert.
There are two reasons, one is to preclude frivolous appeals and another is out of sheer practicality.
At all levels of the legal system, from the USSC down to the State courts and the city courts you have the right to appeal any decision.
Even in cases of original jurisdiction you don’t have the right to have your case completely heard and decided on. It is often that many legal suits are simply dismissed by the courts even at the original level of jurisdiction.
For example if you sue your neighbor because he’s ugly and you don’t like him, sure you can actually file the paperwork but you have no real right to have that case heard and you will have the case dismissed and in that case probably fined for wasting the court’s time and money.
But everything CAN be appealed, this is a mechanism which prevents one faulty jurist from screwing someone or some group. But just because you have the right to file an appeal doesn’t mean you have the right to actually have your appeal heard in court and decided on. The judges always have the right on all levels to decide that the matter you are appealing is not an appealable matter. For example you could file an appeal saying the judge was black which was biased against you as a white man, but that would just get a quick denial from the appeals court.
In fact denying to hear a case IS a form of judgment, it is usually saying the specific point you are raising has such little real legal value it is not even going to be given a chance. Despite the perceived partisanship of many federal judges most of them will accept all appeals on solid legal grounds, more than likely the appeal in question here is not on solid legal grounds. OR it is a matter the court has already ruled on. The court will refuse to hear a case if they’ve already ruled on an identical case, that is just to save the court, the people, and the taxpayer’s time and money.
The practicalities of the ability to refuse to hear cases is there are several thousand cases appealed to the USSC every year but the USSC only has the time to hear about 100. The last year for which I have stats, the USSC had around 7,500 cases filed and they only had the time/inclination to sign opinions on 90 of them.
Also it should be mentioned that the USSC makes the decisions on the legal matters but Congress decides on the structure and procedures of the judicial branch.
For many years there were many types of appeal that the USSC was bound (by Congressional action) to hear. But in 1988 virtually all required appeals were repealed so the court (under an ever expanding caseload) could review and decide for itself what cases to hear.
In general the more petitions the court receives (the court has to review all the petitions it receives) the less time it has to actually hear and decide on cases. Which is why the number of signed opinions decreased from 150/year in the 80s to 90/year in the 90s and who knows how many now.
So it sounds like the reason why many cases are turned away is that they are just too busy. Is there any method, other than opinion, for the SCotUS to turn cases away?
Well, I’m not so sure about the point that they’re too busy. I believe Rehnquist has decided to simply hear less cases each year.
SCOTUS doesn’t “turn away” cases per se; on every case that’s before it, they must hold a vote to see if they will hear it or not. If a case gets 4 of the 9 votes, it will be heard. If it doesn’t get the 4, it will not be heard. The justices base these votes on memos from law clerks. As I understand it, the incoming cases are divvied up among each of the Justices’ law clerks, who prepare a memorandum on it on each side. If a case warrants additional attention, more work will be done. (A huge number of cases presented to SCOTUS are matters that have already been decided, prisoners’ appeals that have little merit or would not sufficiently advance the law, cranks, etc.)
When this is done, the Court either grants or denies certiorari (refers to as cert). When it is denied, it is almost always done without opinion, although a dissenting judge is permitted to file an opinion on the denial of cert expressing why the case should be heard. The vote itself is called a cert conference.
Reasons for granting cert include that it is an issue of great national importance, there is a split in the lower courts, or that the justices want to revisit a decision that needs some tweaking.
Reasons for not granting cert are because the case is moot (no controversy left for SCOTUS to decide), it isn’t ripe (the controversy hasn’t reached the stage necessary for judicial intervention), or SCOTUS doesn’t think the case has percolated through the system for long enough - meaning that not enough lower courts have decided the issue so that there is no split in the courts yet.
Although there has been an increase in volume of the cases before it, I do not believe that is the reason they have limited the number of cases they hear. They could get more law clerks to research the other cases.
As others have posted, the the U.S. Supreme Court can voluntarily select almost all of the cases it hears through grant or denial of the writ of certiorari. Although it has no hard and fast rules, the Court describes the factors it considers when deciding on a petition for certorari in its Rules:
While it’s true in practical terms, i.e., a denial of cert. means you’re stuck with the lower decision, a dnial of cert. is emphatically not a judgment in any legal sense. The denial of cert. is not a statement that the decision below is correct, that it was fairly reached, that it comports with due process, or that it’s an unimportant issue. It could just be a statement that “we’ve got 3,000 frikkin’ cases on the docket and it’s time to clear the brush.”
Correct. You would not, for example, cite a denial of cert as evidence that the prevailing judgement below was correct.
Obviously the prevailing judgement below may be cited as proof of correctness on its own merits. But if Montana v. Smith finds that the Fourth Amendment permits a warrantless search of a wallet when the wallet is handed to a police officer for the sole purpose of providing ID, and the Supreme Court denies cert, you can’t argue that this is a new rule for the whole country. It’s obviously good law in Montana, and the Montana court’s reasoning may be persuasive elsewhere, but the Supreme Court’s lack of decision doesn’t create any precedent.
I agree in principle with what Cliffy said here, but there is a sense in which it does make a small-j judgment on the case – ordinarily a denial of cert. says one of four things: (1) this is a half-assed case that will not make any new law, and in fact is probably an argument we’ve heard and rejected already; (2) this case is not a “good” one for establishing a principle of law, owing to extraneous elements that would obfuscate the main issue raised for review; (3) based on a review of the briefs, this case seems to have been well-decided in the lower courts and does not constitute half of a conflict between lower court decisions; or (4) this case is one of several thousand and is not as “important” from a jurisprudential standpoint as others. Only in the last case is it a “clear the brush” issue.
Remember that every cert. petition gets serious review by SCOTUS law clerks and at least cursory, and sometimes serious, review by one or more justices; they are not rejected out of hand (unless they deserve to be, as in the bizarre stuff like the case Cecil did a column on where the 16th Amendment was alleged to have not been properly adopted owing to the fact that Ohio was not admitted to the Union properly), but simply examined thoroughly to see if they deserve the in-depth briefing and oral arguments of a case that is granted cert.
Technically true, but we don’t note that the case we are citing in our brief was denied cert by the Supremes just to make our briefs longer. While a denial of cert has no precedential value whatsoever, we think (or at least hope) that the denial of cert is one more pebble on our side of the scales of justice.
The Rehnquist Court did decide to hear less cases than the Berger Court, 'tis true. But even if the Rehnquist Court was hearing cases at historically high levels, the overwhelming majority of cert petitions would still be rejected. They are in fact too busy to hear even a decent fraction of them.
WRT the case that prompted the OP, I am going to go out on a limb and speculate on the reason for denial of cert. I think it may relate to Virginia v. Black, decided just last year. The Court decided that a Virginia statute making cross-burning a felony did not conflict with the First Amendment:
The mask law referred to in the OP is, like the cross-burning law, clearly directed against Klan activities. The mask law is also alleged to impinge on the First Amendment. The Court probably felt that there was enough similarity that they did not need to revisit the issue.
Real lawyers are now invited to beat me senseless if I got any of this wrong.
While a denial of cert has no precedential value whatsoever, we think (or at least hope) that the denial of cert is one more pebble on our side of the scales of justice.