http://standdown.typepad.com/weblog/2009/09/the-case-of-the-plummeting-supreme-court-docket.html
The article published on September 29, 2009 said that in the early 1980, the Supreme court decided more that 150 cases; however on these days the number of cases that the court hears have been cut. Law professors and lawyers have working on many theories or making some speculations about why the court has been shrinking dockets. Some of them blame the new legislation, Congress or the Justice Department who are filling few cases for appeals.
The most possible explanation came from David . Stras, a researcher at the University of Minessota, Law School, who said that a crop of five new justices who joined the court in 1986 he found, voted to hear cases far less ofter that the justices they replaced. Also another factor, may be the "cert. pool", the arragement in which of many of those justices share their law clerks to assess the thousand of petitions from which the court culls the cases it will hear. A single clerk writes a “pool memo” evaluating the case, and the memo is distributed to the participating justices. The number of justices in the pool grew to eight from six from 1989 to 1991, and that may have driven down the number of petitions granted, according to Kenneth W. Starr.
These days, many scholars and practitioners say the court is not operating at peak capacity and is not an active enough participant in a dialogue with the lower courts.
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Interesting that the justices are hearing far fewer cases!
ReplyDeleteI just recently saw a piece on TV about how retired Justice O'Connor initiated having a lunch on the days when they were sitting. I did not catch the name of the Justice who was interviewed, but he preferred to eat alone at first. Once he started eating with the group he loved it. He says that they don't talk about the cases. They talk about family, vacation and personal things. He said that it has helped to bring a spirit of unity to the group, dispite their differing opinions. Now they all look forward to the lunches.
Albeit in an elected capacity, US Supreme Court Justices are still performing a job. This seems to me (shy of ownwership of a company/corporation) to be one of the "cushiest" jobs to have. Where else can you determine what you feel like working on (more or less) and how much or little you feel like doing. The fact that the court is hearing less cases leads me to believe that the Justices simply prefer to work less and have their lunches, etc. It seems as though ethics should be more prevelent for each of the Justices and they should want to fulfill their responsibilities to the utmost capacity.
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