What the Supreme Court Did Not Do During the 1952 Term

Abstract

This is the fourth and last of a series of studies made in an attempt to throw some light on the operation of the certiorari jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. On the whole, this has been a baffling and frustrating experience. One can get statistics by the simple process of counting and classifying. But it is far more difficult to get the information necessary to make meaningful the data on this phase of the Court's behavior. It is next to impossible to find out much about the several hundred cases which clog the Miscellaneous Dockets. Even as to cases on the Appellate Docket, one would need the time of the nine Justices and their staffs to have much confidence in his judgment. Nor has the Court itself been of much help. Indeed, the confusion, which these articles have emphasized if they have not removed, has, if anything, been confounded by the views of the Justices as expressed during the last term. Certainly the profession is no nearer an understanding of the effect of a denial of certiorari. Those of its members who took Mr. Justice Frankfurter at his frequently expressed word that a denial means only that fewer than four Justices vote to review, now have the uncomfortable assurance that four members of the Court think that it may mean a great deal more. Those of us who thought this all along find that four other members of the Court agree with Justice Frankfurter.