The Supreme Court, which now enjoys almost exclusive discretion in determining its caseload, hears about 80 cases per term, which begins by statute (set in 1917) on the first Monday in October and typically ends in late June or early July. Each year the Court receives some 7,000 certiorari requests. The number of these requests has increased some fivefold since World War II—a reflection of the country’s population growth, a progressively more litigious legal culture, and a surge in the demands placed on the government by citizens. As the number of certiorari requests has increased, the number of cases decided by the Supreme Court has declined since the mid-20th century, as the justices have opted to hear fewer cases per salient issue area.

All certiorari requests are circulated among the justices. The chief justice leads the Court in developing a “discuss list” of potential cases, though the associate justices may request that additional cases be placed on the list. By the so-called “Rule of Four,” apparently developed in the late 19th century, the decision to grant certiorari requires the assent of at least four justices. Once the decision to hear a case has been made, lower-court records and briefs are delivered to the Court and oral arguments are scheduled. Interested third parties also may submit their opinions to the Court by filing an amicus curiae (Latin: “friend of the Court”) brief. The petitioners and respondents are usually allotted 30 minutes each to present their arguments to the Court. The justices hear neither witnesses nor evidence. Each side in the case attempts to persuade the justices that the Constitution should be interpreted in a manner that supports its point of view.

The decision-making process involves two major judgments. First, in a vote that is usually kept secret, the justices decide the merits of the case; then they issue the official written decision of the Court. The first judgment determines who will write the official decision. By tradition, the chief justice, if a member of the majority, decides whether to author the Court’s verdict and, if not which other justice will do so. If the chief justices is in the minority, the longest-serving member of the majority makes the decision-writing appointment. Since the era of John Marshall, chief justice from 1801 to 1835, it has been common practice for the Court to issue formal opinions to justify its decisions, though the Constitution does not require it to do so. Drafts of all opinions circulate among the justices, and all justices may concur with or dissent from any decision, in full or in part. The final decision effectively represents the supreme law of the land and is expected to be used as a controlling constitutional doctrine by lower courts.

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The Supreme Court exercises the power of judicial review, whereby it can declare acts of Congress or state legislatures unconstitutional. Executive, administrative, and judicial actions also are subject to review by the Court. The doctrine of judicial review is not mentioned explicitly in the Constitution; instead, it was articulated by Marshall in Marbury v. Madison (1803), in which the Court struck down part of the Judiciary Act of 1789. Although since the late 19th century the vast majority of legal scholars have accepted judicial review as a proper power of the Supreme Court, critics have charged that the framers did not intend for the Court to exercise such power, which allows it to act in effect as a legislative body.

Historical trends

Any assessment of the unifying forces in American society must ascribe a significant role to the Supreme Court. In its institutional infancy, the Court necessarily addressed structural and functional questions involving, among other things, federalism, express and implied powers, checks and balances, and the separation of powers. During the mid- to late 19th century, the Court employed the Constitution’s commerce clause (Article I Section 8) to nullify state laws of taxation or regulation that discriminated against or unduly burdened interstate commerce. The clause subsequently was used to uphold the power of Congress to regulate vast sectors of the economy.

Whereas the commerce clause has been the chief doctrinal source of power over the economy, the due-process clause of the Fifth Amendment and the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment have been the principal sources of protection of persons and corporations against arbitrary or repressive acts of government. These clauses were used at first to protect property rights, but in the 1920s they began to be applied to civil liberties, particularly in the extension of most of the Bill of Rights to state actions. By the middle of the century, the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been designed to protect the rights of formerly enslaved persons, was being used to strike down laws that were racially discriminatory, and all rights guaranteed by the First Amendment had been incorporated (and thusly made applicable to the states) through the due-process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. By the end of the 20th century, the Court was addressing issues that had previously been considered off-limits according to the political question doctrine, which it had previously invoked to avoid entering into questions that it thought were best decided by legislatures—e.g., prison administration; the constitutional validity of state electoral districts, and even, arguably, the 2000 presidential election (see Bush v. Gore).

From the early 21st century some of the Court’s decisions reflected a looser application of the political question doctrine while others did not. In Trump v. Anderson (2024), for example, the Court held that the Colorado Supreme Court’s removal of Trump as a presidential candidate in the state’s Republican primary ballot under the Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment (which denies political office to anyone who has “taken an oath… to support the U.S. Constitution” and subsequently engages in “insurrection or rebellion against the same”) did not “preclude [federal] judicial review of former President Trump’s eligibility” to appear on the ballot. In contrast, the Court ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) that the common practice of partisan gerrymandering, which it had previously ruled (or at least recognized) as unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, presents “political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” As a result, challenges to resdistricting plans that clearly diluted the voting power of either Democratic or Republican voters could no longer be challenged in federal courts. In several cases, the Supreme Court also acted upon the states’ rights doctrine, which takes a relatively expansive view of the rights and powers of state governments under the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment. .

Another trend from the early 21st century was a sharp increase in the number of “shadow docket” orders issued by the Supreme Court—so named because orders on that docket are most often unsigned and unexplained. Although most shadow docket orders are routine and consist of granting or denying certiorari or settling procedural matters, the more substantive orders are usually issued in response to emergency requests from plaintiffs or defendants who wish to preserve the status quo or gain immediate relief by means of a preliminary injunction by a lower court or an appeal of a lower court’s decision to a higher court. Such requests may be granted or denied by a single justice assigned to handle applications from the relevant “circuit” (or region) or by the entire Court if the “circuit justice” so refers the request. As with certiorari and procedural orders, substantive shadow docket orders are usually unsigned, though they are occasionally accompanied by brief dissenting opinions.

Beginning with Trump’s first term of office (2017–21), the Court issued shadow-docket orders at a remarkable pace, owing in part to a large number of emergency requests from Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ). Another factor, according to many observers, was the increased number of nationwide preliminary injunctions issued by lower courts in response to actions or policies of the federal government—a type of ruling that some justices viewed as excessively broad. (Indeed, in Trump v. CASA, Inc., et al. [2025], a regular “merit docket” decision issued early in Trump’s second term, the Court effectively required lower federal courts to limit their preliminary injunctions to the temporary relief of the plaintiffs involved in the case.) The Supreme Court continued to regularly issue substantive shadow docket orders during Joe Biden’s presidency (2021–25) and the second term of Trump.

The opinions of the Supreme Court, including the dissenting opinions of individual justices, often have been considered epitomes of legal reasoning. Through these opinions, the Court serves to clarify, refine, and test the philosophical ideals written into the Constitution and to translate them into working principles for a federal union under law. Beyond its specific contributions, this symbolic and pragmatic function may be regarded as the most significant role of the Supreme Court.