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A thoughtful defense of the SCOTUS docket status quo

By Douglas A. Berman

Thanks to this postat Concurring Opinions, I saw that Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III has a great new essay assailing arguments that assail the current docket and case selection process of the Supreme Court. This piece, which is titled "If It Ain?t Broke . . ." and is available here at 119 YLJ ONLINE 67, gets started this way: ?The most important thing we do,? Justice Brandeis once remarked, ?is not doing.?  Alexander Bickel showed long ago how the Supreme Court?s discretionary certiorari jurisdiction was the lynchpin of those ?passive virtues? that are essential to principled government.  Indeed, the cautious exercise of the certiorari jurisdiction may be as important to judicial self-restraint as the Court?s decisions on the merits.  We should therefore view skeptically any attempt to alter the Supreme Court?s case selection process...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on December 27, 2009 (boomark / email).