A Happy-Go-Lucky Story: The American Supreme Court and Overload Problems

Abstract

AbstractNowadays, the U.S. Supreme Court controls its own docket thanks to the discretion it enjoys to select cases based on the writ of certiorari. As a result, the current court has no serious problems of overload and, in fact, the number of cases has decreased by half compared to previous generations. Furthermore, the reduced caseload has not diminished the prominent role that the Supreme Court plays in American society today. But it was not always so. In its beginnings, the Supreme Court was a ‘feeble institution,’ with justices riding circuit, with almost no cases and with not enough justices showing up anyway. After the Civil War, the federal courts and the Supreme Court gained more jurisdiction on ‘federal questions’ and, consequently, more cases to resolve. This increase in powers was not accompanied by changes in the judicial structure—which produced a case overload problem—until 1891. In that year, the U.S. Congress abolished the task of riding circuit for Supreme Court justices and created the intermediate circuit courts of appeals. This reform, however, brought only temporary relief. Litigants kept an automatic right to appeal to the Supreme Court, increasing its caseload pressures again. In the Judiciary Act of 1925, combined with other reforms in a similar direction, Congress redefined the role of the Supreme Court by giving it near-complete control of its docket. This contribution recounts the long journey through which the U.S. Supreme Court became its own master and how case overload problems are now long forgotten.KeywordsUS Supreme CourtWrit of certiorariCaseload