Recommended Citation
Kathryn A. Watts, Constraining Certiorari Using Administrative Law Principles, 160 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1 (2012), https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-articles/41
Publication Title
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
Keywords
delegation
Document Type
Article
Abstract
The U.S. Supreme Court—thanks to various statutes passed by Congress beginning in 1891 and culminating in 1988—currently enjoys nearly unfettered discretion to set its docket using the writ of certiorari. Over the past few decades, concerns have mounted that the Court has been taking the wrong mix of cases, hearing too few cases, and relying too heavily on law clerks in the certiorari process.
Scholars, in turn, have proposed fairly sweeping reforms, such as the creation of a certiorari division to handle certiorari petitions. This Article argues that before the Court’s discretion to set its own agenda is taken away, another area of the law—one that already has thought long and hard about how to constrain delegated discretion—should be consulted: administrative law.
Although certiorari and administrative law certainly differ, both involve congressional delegations of discretion to a less accountable body and therefore both raise concerns of accountability, transparency, and reasoned decisionmaking. Accordingly, in considering certiorari reform, it makes sense to borrow from some of administrative law’s well-developed lessons about how delegated discretion can be controlled.
Specifically, after consulting the nondelegation doctrine, reason-giving requirements, public participation mechanisms, and oversight principles found in administrative law, this Article concludes that vote-disclosure requirements and increased public participation stand as promising ways of checking the Court’s currently unconstrained discretion.