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Of more than 10 million cases tried in U.S. courts each year, the Supreme Court eventually receives some 2,500 and hands down opinions on only about 150. A refusal to review signifies neither approval nor disapproval of the lower-court decision. However just an appellant's claims, the Supreme Court is interested, or is supposed to be interested, only in issues of the most far-reaching applicability. "This is the nation's ultimate judicial tribunal, not a super legal-aid bureau," said Justice Frankfurter, who often argued that the Court was considering too many cases that were too limited to merit its attention.
Search for Consensus. To get a case accepted for review takes four votes at a weekly Friday conference, a secret ritual in a book-lined room with a portrait of John Marshall peering down over the marble fireplace. The Justices shake hands to show harmony and gather around a conference table in prescribed order to begin their intellectual conflict. The junior Justice dutifully tends the door. Only the Court itself knows the course of battle; not even a stenographer is present.
Cases accepted are later argued in open court, a harrowing experience for lawyers. There they stand at a rostrum facing the bench, trying in one hour or less to swing nine (or at least five) wholly different minds to their side. At mid-bench looms the benign Chief Justice Warren, ever ready to ask a prosecutor, "But were you fair?" To Warren's left is the brilliant William O. Douglas, seeming not to care, his leathery face bent over some private scribbling, until he suddenly looks up and lets fly with an acute question: "But wouldn't you say . . .?" To the right of the Chief Justice is the patriarchal Black, gently rocking in his green leather chair, helpfully breaking in to sum up whenever a lawyer puts a good point badly: "Now, as I understand your argument . . ."
At the next Friday conference, the Justices discuss and argue and finally vote, before Warren (or the majority's senior Justice if Warren dissents) assigns the job of writing the majority's opinion. But even then the Court has not necessarily come to a conclusion. In their secret search for consensus, which may take months for a complex opinion, well-guarded drafts are printed in the Court's basement and passed among the Justices for criticism. In a process of dissuasion as well as persuasion, opinions may change enough so that the majority of Justices switches sides. All this goes on without a single leak to the press until a Monday "decision day," when the Justices file into court and begin reading aloud another constitutional thunderbolt.
Divining from Dreams. The job of