Abstract
Almost all cases reach the U.S. Supreme Court's docket through discretionary grants of writs of certiorari. On rare occasions the Court will dismiss a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted, or DIG the case. The DIG process has received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature. This paper fills that gap in several ways. First, it documents the 155 cases the Court has DIGged in the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts (1954 through 2004 Terms). It then examines related empirical issues, including how often the Court, collectively or through individual Justices, explains or criticizes a DIG; how often the issue presented in the DIGged case returns to the Court in subsequent litigation; and how the disposition of DIGged cases compares to cases where the Court considered but declined to DIG. The paper then considers how the Court may use DIGs to control the number and types of cases on the docket. Finally, it considers whether DIGs should be conceptualized as, or are sometimes examples of, strategic behavior by the Justices.
Published Version
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