Dennis J. Hutchinson

The Business of the Supreme Court, O.T. 1982

For at least the past decade, the workload of the Supreme Court of the United States has been too great to dispatch efficiently and thoughtfully within an annual term. Ten years ago, almost everyone except the Justices themselves agreed that there was a serious problem. (The Court, of course, was divided.) The only question was what, if anything, should be done about it. Today, the Court is virtually united, but only in recognizing the existence of a problem. At the conclusion of October Term 1981, seven Justices-speaking individually and extrajudicially-certified that they had too much to do each year to perform at a level that the profession and the country are entitled to expect. But the question remained, what to do? Before any debate-if there is to be a serious debate and not simply an annual end-of-term amusement on the op-ed pages-focuses exclusively on remedies, it is necessary to look more carefully at the problems. The right answer depends on the right question. Too often, the Court and its critics define the problems in terms of numbers: too many petitions for certiorari,