Explainers/Courts
How the Supreme Court takes a case
Four votes to hear it, nine to decide it, and a growing share of orders issued without argument.
4 min read|Updated July 27, 2026
Almost all cases reach the Supreme Court through a petition for a writ of certiorari. The court receives thousands of petitions each term and hears argument in roughly 60 to 70. Granting review takes four votes; deciding the case takes five.
- Petitions filed per term
- Roughly 5,000 to 7,000
- Cases argued per term
- About 60 to 70
- Votes to grant review
- 4
- Votes to win
- 5
What makes the court take a case?
The strongest factor is a circuit split, meaning federal appeals courts have reached conflicting conclusions on the same question of federal law. The court also takes cases raising important unresolved federal questions, or where a lower court departed from its precedent. The Solicitor General's support substantially raises a petition's odds.
What is the rule of four?
Four of the nine justices must vote to grant certiorari for the court to hear a case. It is an internal practice, not a statute, and it lets a minority of the court put an issue on the docket even though a majority is needed to prevail on the merits.
What happens at argument?
Each side generally receives 30 minutes, beginning with uninterrupted time before open questioning, followed by a round in which each justice may question in order of seniority. The justices then meet in a private conference, take a preliminary vote, and the senior justice in the majority assigns the opinion.
What is the emergency docket?
Sometimes called the shadow docket, it handles applications for stays and injunctions that cannot wait for full review. These orders arrive on compressed schedules, usually without oral argument and often with brief or no reasoning, yet they can determine whether a policy operates for months or years while litigation continues.