How does a case end up at the Supreme Court?

0:04That's both a very simple question and it can be quite a deep question. Simplest level, people bring their appeals to the supreme court. The supreme court agrees to hear the case, which it doesn't have to do. The court has almost complete discretion over what cases it chooses to hear. It sets the case for argument. It takes the votes of four justices to hear a case. That's an informal rule, it's not in the laws, not congress. The court has decided over a period of years if that's the way they want to work and force interesting number because of course, it's short of a majority. If there are four justices who feel really strongly about something, we really want to take this case, but we're not sure we can get a fifth vote, they might not take it.

0:49They might exercise their judgment that we're going to wait, we're not going to plunge into this. Before the argument, the parties file briefs. The briefs are quite extensive, 50, 60 pages. Friends of the court on one side or the other can also file a shorter briefs. Sometimes in a big case, there's more than 100 of those.

1:09The court hears oral argument, used to be for an hour per case in the era of Zoom. Now back to the courtroom the argument is basically go as long as the justices have questions. Can go two hours or more. Then a black hole opens up, the justices retreat to their private conference room. There's nobody there except the nine justices, no law clerks, no secretaries, they discuss. The same week as the argument actually, they take a straw vote and whichever side gets the majority, whichever side gets five votes the chief justice, if he's in the majority, gets to assign somebody to write the opinion himself or somebody else in the majority. If the chief justice is not in the majority, then the senior associate justice who is in the majority gets to make the assignment.

1:57They retreat to their chambers, they start working, they come up with a draft, circulate the draft. If the drafts still holds the majority, that basically becomes the majority opinion. The other side can write a descent, or if say there's only five members of the majority in one of the five sits, I'm with you most of the way, but I sure would be happier if you change paragraph X to this way.

2:19That negotiation is very common, that goes on. But eventually within the same term that the court has heard the argument. I stress that because the court stays very current in it's work, there are other courts cases can linger for years and people forget about them, but the supreme court, it's very current in his work. Before the term ends on roughly late June, that decision will issue. That in a nutshell, is skimming the surface of complex and intense procedure.