By Stephen Macaulay
The Supreme Court consists of one chief justice and eight associate justices. According to the Supreme Court Historical Society, “For all judicial matters, the Clerk. … and his staff of 31 are the link between the Justices and the legal world.”
So that brings us to 41 people.
Then there are, according to that society, more than 500 people who “work regularly in the Supreme Court building.”
Even if there are custodial personnel counted, the number is still a non-trivial one.
Of late, the Supreme Court hears about 60 cases per term. And while the number submitted is in the thousands, according to the Court itself, “The vast majority of cases filed in the Supreme Court are disposed of summarily by unsigned orders.”
SCOTUS says that it receives 7,000 to 8,000 petitions annually.
Presumably, the Justices are not burning the midnight oil going through piles of paper each and every day, though their clerks undoubtedly are.
While not a perfect comparison by any means but simply a way of putting these piles into context:
“Penguin Random House is the international home to more than 300 … independent publishing imprints. Together, our imprints publish over 70,000 digital and 15,000 print titles annually.”
Know that odds of getting a manuscript published by any publisher is no better than 2%.
So if Penguin Random House publishes 85,000 manuscripts and if the take rate is 2%, then this means it is receiving 4,250,000 manuscripts per year.
Penguin Random House has 12,330 employees.
If each of them reads manuscripts (of course, they don’t), then that’s about 345 titles per year.
If each of the 500 people at the Supreme Court reads her or his share of the 8,000 petitions, then that’s 16.
To be fair to the Supreme Court, deciding whether to publish a cowboy-vampire-bodice-ripper is not as critical as deciding on a case that will have profound consequences on someone’s future.
Still, there seems to be a bit of a productivity problem here.
This is underscored by its decision about taking up the case of whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted in relation to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol or whether he has immunity.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia had done the homework on the case, and on February 6 rejected Trump’s claim.
Trump’s people came to the Supreme Court with their appeal on February 12 (the day of the deadline set by the D.C. Circuit).
Special Counsel Jack Smith was given until February 20 by the Supreme Court to respond. The response came on February 14 — two days after the Trump’s brief.
On February 28 the Supreme Court announced that it is taking up Trump’s appeal.
That’s two weeks from when Smith’s team got their work done.
The Supreme Court wrote in an unsigned order, “The case will be set for oral argument during the week of April 22, 2024.”
That is more than nine weeks from February 14, when they had the paperwork for both sides.
They couldn’t have adjusted the calendar a bit?
Odds are, if you suddenly have a toothache your dentist will get you in ASAP and if your water heater bursts the plumber isn’t going to tell you that (s)he’ll come week-after-next.
There are some people who think that there need to be more justices on the Supreme Court.
I’d argue that there needs to be more productivity from all of the people involved on the Supreme Court.
Consider: the Supreme Court hears arguments during two periods of the year: October through December and January through April.
And for the first session the oral arguments are heard during the first two weeks of the month and it is the last two weeks for the second session. In both cases it is on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
While they are unquestionably working on the remaining two days of the week, there is still a whole lot more downtime than that available to the employees of, to stick with the comparison, Penguin Random House, who are probably working 48 weeks per year.
Again, a fuzzy comparison, but still, there is clearly evidence that there is not a whole lot of efficiency in the performance of the Supreme Court.
Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.
_____________________________________________
More Macaulay ...
What does the Truman-era Supreme Court decision in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer have to do with the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in United States of America v. Donald J. Trump that ruled the former president does not have executive immunity in his indictment for allegedly inciting the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol? Read pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay’s “History Lesson” in this column. Scroll down using the trackbar on the far right to read his commentary.
Then scroll further down the page to read Macaulay’s right-column take on Trump’s decisive win in the New Hampshire primary.
Comments on these and other recent news and political issues are welcome. Email us at editors@thehustings.news and please let us know whether your political leanings land you in the right or left column.