The Supreme Court

 

    Through the videos we watched in class and learned about, I have learned a lot about the Supreme Court that I did not know before. I was not aware of what certiorari is, nor that the Supreme Court of the United States of America (SCOTUS) had the power to use it. In simple terms, certiorari is SCOTUS's right to pick and choose which cases they hear over the course of a given year. It is because of this power that they see only around 100 cases a year. Just one hundred!

    Any case looking to be seen by the SCOTUS must begin with a petition and work their way up from there. Once a petition has been created, it is sent to the SCOTUS for review. The cases they do see are sorted out from hundreds of thousands sent to the court house at any given time. Justices meet weekly to discuss which cases to take and which to drop. This system is what prevents the court from getting inundated in lesser decisions that are likely better left to the lower courts to handle. Below is a flow chart indicating the routes a case or petition can take to get to the SCOTUS level.

    Once a case has been seen by the SCOTUS and a verdict has been reached, a justice is chosen to write an opinion explaining the decision. Even though this single justice is chosen, any of the members of SCOTUS justices may write their own opinion expressing dissent to the decision or agreeing with it but for different reasons.