Week 2 May 17 21 17 ch 1 How cases get to the supreme court Cases get to the supreme court by means of JURISDICTION and by THE ROUTES OF APPEAL How do cases get to the supreme court via Jurisdiction By a request for review under the courts original jurisdiction Original jurisdiction cases DEF cases that have not been heard by any other court Article 3 of the constitution authorizes original jurisdiction cases in two specified 1 Such suits as those that involve ambassadors from foreign countries 2 Such suits in which a state is a party usually these suits are pertaining to boundary circumstances issues or water issues BUT Because congressional legislation permits LOWER COURTS to exercise concurrent authority over MOST cases that meet the requirements set fourth in article 3 consequently yhe Supreme court does NOT have exclusive jurisdiction over them In sum the Supreme court usually only accepts those cases in which a state is suing another state and sends the discarded cases down to the lower courts for a ruling to be made NOTE As a result only 1 5 cases per term are original jurisdiction cases In the Supreme How do cases get to the supreme court via Appellate jurisdiction and what are The Court DEF routes of appeal Appelate jurisdicition The way most cases reach the supreme court Appealate jurisdiction states that a lawyer or state court has already rendered a decision on a case at hand at which point the court with appealate jurisdiction is at liberty to review the decision should one of the parties of said case request such a review NOTE Typically these cases come from the US courts of appeals or the state Supreme Court There are three ways a case reaches the supreme court by means of the appellate route 1 Appeals as a matter of right Pre 1988 appeals Prior to 1988 appeals as a matter of right were cases where a lower court declared a state or federal law unconstitutional Or alternatively appeals as a matter of right were those cases in which a state UPHELD a state law that has been challanged on the grounds that it violated the US constitution Justices were supposed to decide such appeals that were a matter of right However the justices instead failed to consider these cases and instead issued a summary judgement shorthand ruling As a result in 1988 with the Supreme court s urging congress virtually eliminated That said our Supreme Court now is obligated to hear only those Few cases appealed from what are special three judge district courts NOTE When the Supreme court agrees to hear such cases it issues an order original noting its PROBABLE JURISDICTION Second rarely used way in which an appeal may invoke a courts appealate jurisdiction mandatory appeals 2 certification is Certification DEFINITION Under the courts appealate jurisdiction as well as an act of congress lowere appellate courts can write the Supreme court justices in hopes of soliciting a response to questions the lower court is contemplating about an uncertainty of the federal law Thus the lower court is requesting clearification from the Supreme Court on possibly ambiguous vague broad or other implicit matter NOTE THAT courts appelate jurisdiction Only Judges may use the route of certification as a means of invoking the Supreme CONSEQUENTLY it is a rarity for a case to reach the Supreme Court via certification The justices are free to oblige the lower court by answering the questions or they may also outright decline to respond to said questions CLASS NOTE The Supreme Court will Rarely if ever respond to the questions of the lower courts They most always decline to answer 3 Petitions for writs of habeous corpus Latin for to be informed The petitions for writ of habeous corpus is the third and final means by which an appeal is brought before the Supreme court In said petitions the litigants are requesting that the supreme court literally become informed about their cases by requesting that the lower courts send the case files information up to the Supreme court for the justices to view 8 000 plus of Supreme court cases arrive via petitions for writs of certiorari FEWER than one percent of the 8 000 plus cases are granted writ making explicit the supreme courts freedom to choose the cases that they are willing to review NOTE grant of cert The Supreme court has accepted the writ of habeus corpus petition and will subsequently give the case a full review Alternatively denial of writ It is the end all for the case at hand The supreme court has refused to review the records and the lower courts decision will be upheld THE CIRCUIT POOL The justices each pool there four clerks and the chief justice will have his five clerks and one clerk will be assigned to read a petition and write a memo in response to that decisions to whether the clerk believes the case is worthy of review by the supreme court All justices do this except Stevens and Aledo utilize this circuit pool Aledo has 3 clerks and not 4 clerks Thus if you re a clerk for Aledo you have to read every petition or at least divide it by four The circuit writes memo take don t take the case at hand Memo is circulated to all of the justices not just the immediate supervising justice Out of this the justices make a decision about something called the DISCUSS LIST If they want to hear the case they add it to the discuss list and it is followed by a vote on made on the cases on the discuss list as to whether or not to hear that case The clerks are able to read into things fairly efficiently After Kagan every justice has gone to Harvard or Yale SIDE NOTE THE CASES for grant or deny CONFERENCE VOTE WHAT IS A CONGRESS VOTE AND HOW DOES IT DECIDE If there are four votes then the case will be heard by the Supreme Court Often they abide by the rule of four There is a docket sheet in the book on page 16 and under certs you can see a d or a g Sometimes you see these 3 checkmarks that are essentially saying if you get three votes I will provide the 4th vote ITS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT THESE ARE ALL JUST DISCRETIONAL RULINGS AND THE SUPREME COURT COULD VOTE 2MORROW TO ONLY MAINTAIN 7 JUSTICES Given that we only are going to take 80 out of 10 000 cases what makes a case cert Note again the rule of four if there is 3 yes votes a 4th justice will vote yes as a courtesy 1 If the clerks think there is a constitutional violation issue than the clreks wont want to make a speculation w o seeing the whole case justices figure there is a good chance that the case is a constitutional issue