Writ of Certiorari
A petition for a writ of certiorari asks the U.S. Supreme Court to review a judgment from a state court of last resort or a U.S. court of appeals; the rules address both civil and criminal cases. Review is discretionary, not a matter of right. If the Court grants the petition, it schedules merits briefing and oral argument and requests the record if it is not already filed; a formal writ issues only if specially directed.
Certiorari is the mechanism by which the Supreme Court exercises nearly complete control over its own docket. A losing party in a lower court petitions the Court for a “writ of certiorari,” and under the “Rule of Four,” the Court will agree to hear the case (“grant cert”) if at least four of the nine justices vote to do so — a threshold deliberately lower than a majority, meant to let a determined minority of justices bring up cases the majority might prefer to avoid. Out of the roughly 5,000 to 7,000 petitions filed each year, the Court typically grants full review to somewhere around 60 to 70.
Denial of certiorari carries no substantive legal meaning at all — it is not a ruling on the merits and sets no precedent, even though it leaves the lower court’s decision in place as the final word for that case. The Court denies the overwhelming majority of petitions without any explanation whatsoever, which means a denial reveals nothing officially about whether the justices agreed with the lower court, thought the issue unimportant, or simply lacked four votes for review despite disagreeing with the outcome.
Common misconception: people often treat a denial of certiorari as the Supreme Court effectively affirming or endorsing the lower court’s ruling. A cert denial is legally meaningless as precedent and reveals nothing about the justices’ views on the merits — it only means fewer than four justices wanted to hear the case, for whatever reason, which could include agreement, indifference, or simply waiting for a better vehicle to address the same issue later.