Amicus Curiae

An amicus curiae brief lets outside groups, individuals, or governments weigh in on a case without being a formal party to the lawsuit — typically to supply expertise, real-world context, or a broader perspective the parties themselves might not fully represent. Filing one at the Supreme Court usually requires either consent from both parties (routinely granted) or the Court’s own permission.

High-profile cases can draw enormous numbers of these briefs. More than 140 amicus briefs were filed in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), one of the most in Supreme Court history, representing everything from medical associations to state governments to historians. Despite that volume, the Court’s opinions in the case directly cited only a small fraction of them — roughly two dozen — illustrating that filing a brief is no guarantee it meaningfully shapes the outcome.

Common misconception: people often assume every amicus brief filed gets serious individual consideration by the justices. In reality, with dozens or even over a hundred briefs sometimes filed in a single case, many are read primarily by law clerks, cited rarely if at all, and serve more to signal the breadth of interested parties than to introduce arguments the Court hadn’t already considered.