Established pursuant to Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution in 1789, it has original jurisdiction over a small range of cases, such as suits between two or more states, and those involving ambassadors.
Moreover, the Court has the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution or an executive act for being unlawful.
A term of the Supreme Court commences on the first Monday of each October, and continues until June or early July of the following year.
[8] The Court strictly enforces its requirements for the preparation and timely filing of certiorari petitions, in order to manage such a massive caseload.
This occasionally results in harsh consequences, as Justice Thomas acknowledged in a 2007 opinion: "Just a few months ago, the Clerk, pursuant to this Court's Rule 13.2, refused to accept a petition for certiorari submitted by Ryan Heath Dickson because it had been filed one day late ... Dickson was executed on April 26, 2007, without any Member of this Court having even seen his petition for certiorari.
[14] The votes of four justices at conference (see Rule of four) will suffice to grant certiorari and place the case on the court's calendar.
In the Court's early years, attorneys might argue a single case for hours or even days; but as the judicial workload increased, the time available for argument has been restricted.
(The primary requirement for admission to the Bar is that the attorney must have been admitted to practice in the highest court of a state or territory for at least the past three years.)
[16] At the beginning of the 2019 term, the Court adopted a rule allotting advocates two minutes of uninterrupted time for introductory remarks.
[17] Access to oral arguments are generally limited to the justices, the counsels for the parties of the cases, and about 50 seats set aside for members of the public to watch.
In an interview for C-SPAN, former Justice Scalia, speaking for himself, noted that by the time the justices hear oral arguments, having read the submissions by the parties and amici, it was "very rare, though not unheard of", for the discussion during the oral arguments to change his view of a case in which he had already made up his mind based on the submissions and his research about the case.
[20] Due to the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 requiring social distancing to prevent spread of the virus, the Supreme Court cancelled several oral arguments in the months of March and April and, as to prevent excessive backup on their schedule, held oral arguments in about a dozen cases via teleconference in May 2020.
The teleconferences included all nine Justices and the legal counsels for the cases, but in a first for the Court, were live-streamed for all members of the public to listen to live.
[21] At the end of a week in which the Court has heard oral arguments, the justices hold a conference to discuss the cases and vote on any new petitions of certiorari.
No clerks are permitted to be present, which would make it exceedingly difficult for a justice without a firm grasp of the matters at hand to participate.
A justice may be swayed by the persuasiveness (or lack thereof) of the opinion or dissent, or as a result of reflection and discussion on the points of law at issue.
Justices who do not agree with the decision made by the majority may also submit dissenting opinions, which may give alternative legal viewpoints.
John Marshall Harlan's dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson set down for the majority opinion later in Brown v. Board of Education.
Customarily, justices who were not seated at the time oral arguments were heard by the Supreme Court do not participate in the formulation of an opinion.
In this event the writ of certiorari is "dismissed as improvidently granted" (DIGged)—saying, in effect that the Court should not have accepted the case.
As with the granting or denial of cert, this dismissal is usually issued without explanation, normally with a one-sentence per curiam decision if the Court already heard oral arguments.
No opinions (or voting alignments) are issued in such a case, only the one-sentence announcement that "[t]he judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court."
For example, after the retirement of Justice O'Connor in 2006, there were three cases that would have had 4–4 splits, but they were all reargued to allow the newly appointed Samuel Alito to cast a decisive vote.
Since recording devices are banned inside the courtroom, the fastest way for decisions of landmark cases to reach the press had recently been through the Running of the Interns,[33] though this has declined as the Court has started to post opinions online as soon as they are announced from the bench.
The practice of issuing a single opinion of the Court was initiated during the tenure of Chief Justice John Marshall during the early 19th century.
Two other widely used citation formats exist: the Supreme Court Reporter and the Lawyers' Edition, corresponding to two privately published collections of decisions.