Is the Supreme Court pathetic?

Yes says Jason Mazzone:

Last term, the Supreme Court issued opinions in just 74 cases. That’s pretty pathetic. It means there are many areas of the law that are unsettled or unreviewed; many important issues in which the Supreme Court could helpfully weigh in but it doesn’t; many issues that, once decided, will not reach the Court again for decades, if ever.

A low number of cases does not, however, mean light reading. Many of these 74 cases produced multiple opinions by sub-groups of justices. It’s not hard to see why this is true. Divide 74 up among nine justices and 30-plus law clerks and the temptation to write separately is irresistible.

He also says:

Brown v. Board of Education (1954), one of the Court’s most important decisions ever, was unanimous and ran just seven pages.

Brown v Board of Education was an opinion that sucked for many reasons (and one day maybe I'll write about it), so that's a bad example.

However, I certainly do observe that over the course of two centuries, the trend with the Supreme Court has been towards ever longer cases with more dissents and concurring opinions. Once upon a time, dissents were rare, and there were many dissents that consisted entirely of "I respectfully dissent." Justices were loathe to write anything negative about their fellows.

My theory is that word processors have resulted in much longer court decisions. Writing used to be difficult when it had to be done with pen and paper, but now when it can be typed on a computer, the result is extremely long opinions.

However, these modern opinions are fun to read, especially the dissents which add much flavor to an otherwise dull subject. In law school, I always loved to read Scalia's brilliant wording and his attacks on fellow justices. Besides a few rare exceptions (such as the rarely read but frequently condemned Dred Scott case), old cases are pretty boring reads.

Comments

[Sally]

I hope you will write about Brown and why you think it was a bad decision.

[Half Sigma]

I wrote that Brown was an "opinion that sucked," not that it was a "bad decision."

[Croox0r]

The reason why the supreme court take so few cases is that very few cases ever get appealed. Less than 5% of civil cases ever go to trial (most settle), and less than 5% of criminal convictions occur after a jury trial (most plead). Most of the cases that do end in a trial are never appealed. And, most of those appeals are never appealed again to the supreme court. Also, those very few cases that make it to the supreme court are all extraordinarily hard cases to decide (the easy cases never make it that far).
As for all those lingering important issue the supreme court doesn't take cases on? The supreme court can only hear cases that are appealed to it, it does not have a 'reach down' power than allows it to hear any case it wants.
Take a high school government class, moron.

[Half Sigma]

The Supreme Court grants certiorari to only a small percent of petitions. There is a huge pool of cases that Supreme Court could hear from its cert pool if it wanted to.