Redefining the Supreme Court's Role: A Theory of Managing the Federal Judicial Process
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Description
Is the United States Supreme Court facing a workload crisis that threatens its capacity to perform its constitutional functions? Former Chief Justice Warren Burger and others have proclaimed the existence of such a crisis and have proposed the creation of a new national court of appeals that would promulgate nationally binding law in cases referred to it by the Supreme Court. Samuel Estreicher and John Sexton argue that what the country needs is not a new appellate court but a redefinition of the role of the Supreme Court in our society. The authors, who recently directed a large study on this topic for New York University, suggest that the volume of litigation and the pervasive reach of federal law make it impossible for the Supreme Court to be the ultimate check on error in our legal system. They propose instead that the Supreme Court should act as the manager of the national lawmaking process, overseeing the work of the federal and state courts and intervening only when necessary. Using this managerial concept of the Supreme Court, the authors develop comprehensive criteria for Supreme Court case selection - criteria that would systematize the Court's own vague and inconsistent case selection process - and then apply these criteria to each of the cases that came before the Court in a specific period. By assessing empirically the Courts "workload crisis," they find that a significant portion of the time and energies of the Supreme Court is being misdirected and that the Court has ample capacity to decide all the cases that truly require its attention.
Publication Date
1986
Recommended Citation
Estreicher, Samuel and Sexton, John E., "Redefining the Supreme Court's Role: A Theory of Managing the Federal Judicial Process" (1986). Faculty Books & Edited Works. 218.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-books-edited-works/218
