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SCOTUS ‘ENDLESS SUMMER’ ENDS

The Supreme Court brings its three-month recess to an end tomorrow, when the Justices will hold the Court’s annual “long conference.”

Throughout the year, the Justices meet on a nearly weekly basis to consider pending petitions for certiorari. But that practice ends in late June when the Court breaks for the summer. Then, petitions pile up over the summer.

At the annual “long conference,” held the week before the Court begins its next term, the Justices will typically dispose of about 2,000 pending petitions. A research paper published seven years ago in the Law and Society Review found that the petitions arriving over the summer had a 16% worse chance of being accepted by the Court.

Gregory Garre, Solicitor General during the George W. Bush administration, told The New York Times, “Given the numbers, as counsel, you really have to try your best to avoid the summer list, though sometimes it is unavoidable,” Garre said. “Fortunately, as tough as the odds are, the cream can still rise to the top.”

The Court convenes to begin October Term 2022 (the name of the nine-month term ending June 30, 2023) next Monday.

49 Law and Society Review, Seasonal Affective Disorder: Clerk Training and the Success of Supreme Court Certiorari Petitions (August 27, 2015)

New York Times, Supreme Court’s End-of-Summer Conference: Where Appeals ‘Go to Die’ (August 31, 2015)

– Thomas L. Root