731. How Does A Case Get to The Supreme Court?

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. Today, I want to talk about one of my favorite topics, the Supreme Court, and specifically how a case gets to the Supreme Court, because here's the thing most adults might not admit. No one, well, some people really know, but a lot of people don't really know. They understand the significance of the Supreme Court.

They know it is the highest court of the land. They know that it is Supreme, if you will. They know that it's kind of the last resort for a lawsuit, that it can't go any higher. You hear movies where people say, I'm going to fight this and I'm going to take it from City Hall all the way to the Supreme Court. But what does that mean?

And how does it get there? We are going to talk about that today. So I want you to think about this before we jump into the nitty gritty of it. I want you to think about a dispute on the playground. What does that mean? A dispute on the playground would be like, you got in a fight with a friend or you got

in a disagreement. So or dispute, you couldn't agree on something. That is the entire reasons court exists, courts exist, excuse me. They exist to solve disputes. They're like a mediator. They're a third party who hears both sides and determines who was really at fault.

So let's say you're on the playground and some of you don't go to regular school, your homeschooled or unschooled, but pretend if you will, I'm sure you've seen shows with recess. You are at recess. You get in a fight with your friend. You are arguing. Now before you go straight to the principal for an answer, there are usually like recess

monitors, which are adults, but they're not teachers who monitor everyone at recess and at lunch so that the teachers can go do their thing and they're the ones that are kind of your first line of defense. So you go to them. They're your first stop, okay, and you present the facts. You maybe have people who witnessed, you know, the argument, the disagreement, tell their

side of the story and what happened. And then maybe the lunch monitors decide, okay, you shouldn't have done that. You miss recess. You have to sit in the bench. I'm not saying I agree with taking recess away from kids. This is just the way it goes in public school sometimes.

But that's your first court, let's say, okay, but maybe you really don't agree with what the lunch monitors, recess monitors said and you think there's something really seriously wrong here and justice was not served. So you go to your teachers and you say, look, this is what happened at lunch. I need you to figure out what happened or figure out if justice, you know, was served, okay?

So you're appealing. You're going to another, another authority figure, I don't like that word, but you know what I mean? Another third party, a mediator to say, do you think that the lunch monitors got this right? Do you think, you know, I was at fault and blah, blah, let's say you don't like the teachers

decision. You would go to the principal. You would bring your case to the principal and you'd say, listen, I really don't think I was at fault here. Can you please review the facts again and tell me what you think? Okay.

So I want you to think about the Supreme Court like the principal. All right. There's all these, these lower courts that you have to go through. There's a system, a procedure in place you have to go through. And finally at the very end, you get to the top one and what the principal says goes. That's what is going to happen.

Now I'm making this up. I don't know if this is how your school operates. I'm sure a principal would not want to hear about disputes on the playground, but you never know. So let's just think about it in terms of that. And now let's jump into the Supreme Court specifically.

If your neighbor steals from you, that's not an issue that's ever going to make it to the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court only deals with specific federal issues, issues that touch on a constitutional question. Okay. But that doesn't mean it only needs to be a federal lawsuit. There are two kinds of cases that can make it to the Supreme Court.

So let's talk about the state first and then the federal. They each take a similar path, but they're a little different. So let's say you are at a protest in your town and the state, policemen come and let's say you are exercising your free speech and they arrest protesters and they say, no, you don't have a right to free speech here. You're on, you know, city hall property and you say, oh my goodness, no, I have a first

amendment right to free speech. You are wrong. I am fighting this. I'm going to take you to court. Okay. So constitutional issue, right?

Because it's free speech, which is under the constitution and thanks to the 14th amendment, the states do have to abide by the constitution, but it's going to originate on the state level. Now let's say you have bought property in, I don't know, Montana or something and you go to build on your land and all of a sudden the EPA environmental protection agency comes to you and says, wait a second, your land is actually a protected wetland, even though there's just a tiny little puddle on there and you actually can't build on your land.

And if you keep building on it or if you don't turn it back to how it was before, we're going to find you $75,000 a day. That sounds crazy. Right? Guess what? That actually happens.

There are real stories of that happening, but the EPA that's a federal agency, right? And so that is going to be a federal case right off the bat because you can say, hey, constitutionally you can't do that to me because constitutionally you don't have or you have too broad of a power to interpret what protected wetlands means. And again, I won't get into the nitty gritty of that, but that is an example of real things that happen.

So both these issues, the state and the federal, they both have to do with the constitution, but they're originating differently. This one over here with the free speech and the protesters remember that is a state police officer saying you couldn't protest on the city hall, then you have the EPA federal agency, and that's going to be federal, but they're going to take similar paths. So the first stop for a state court is going to be a trial court.

Now a trial court is what you see most on TV. That's what you associate courts with or trials with. That's where you call witnesses, you protect, you present facts, you have, you know, eyewitness testimonies, you have all these things that is going to give that are going to give the judge and sometimes a jury the information they need to say, okay, is this person guilty or did the state do something wrong?

Okay. So that's going to be your first stop in a state court case. Now let's go over to the federal court case. Your first stop is also going to be a trial court, but for federal cases, we call those district courts and the country is split up into about 94 district courts, depending on where you live.

That also includes the territories like Puerto Rico. So you're going to have a district court you belong to that district court is going to be where you are presenting your evidence, where there are eyewitness testimonies, all that good stuff. That's going to happen in the district court. So just to recap again, state case, state trial court, federal case, district court,

but they're both trial courts where you're presenting evidence. Now let's say you lose bummer, right? But it's not over yet. No, which is great. You have the opportunity to appeal to appeal. That means you get to basically tell another court, hey, no, they didn't get it right.

I would really love you to reexamine to go over all the facts of the case again and the evidence we presented. If you can go through that again and tell me if the lower court got it right, let's go back to our playground analogy. So that first trial court, that's going to be those lunch monitors, those recess monitors who first hear your story.

And then you're going to go to your teachers, right, and see if they have a different take. That's going to be your appeals court. Now state level, that's going to be just a state court of appeals. Nothing super fancy with the name there, right? For the federal courts, that's going to be called the circuit courts of appeals. So you're going to have, sometimes we just call them circuit courts, but you're going

to have circuit courts. There are 12 circuit courts and those are based on where you live also, they're going to be divided geographically. But there's an extra court, there's actually a 13th district court that deals with very specific issues like patent law. So there is a 13th, but you only use that under special circumstances.

So otherwise, you're just going to use one of the 12. So in these appeals courts, you're not going to be calling test or calling for eyewitness testimonies. You're not going to bring witnesses. You're not going to represent, you know, any evidence. It's already been done at the lower courts.

So what you're going to do is you're just going to say, Hey, please, can you review the facts, review everything that happened. Do you think the lower court got it right? Or do you think maybe I actually am innocent and that they got it wrong? They're going to review it. They're going to come to their decision.

Let's say you once again lose and the courts side with the other guy, not great, but it's also not over yet. So let's start with the state side of things. So you have this case and remember this case still deals with a constitutional issue, right? So it's not just my neighbor did this to me and I'm suing them. It's the government did something to me.

I think what they did was unconstitutional. It violated my rights. So now you are going to go to the state Supreme Court. Now the state Supreme Court does not have to hear your case. In fact, sometimes they don't hear your case and they refuse to hear it. And some people that's where it ends and you've come to the end of the line and you, you

know, dust yourself off and move on with your life. But if the state Supreme Court does hear it, then you have another instance where they can review the facts of the lower court and decide whether or not you were in the wrong if the lower courts got it right. So they're doing kind of the same thing the appeals court did, but they're like the end of the line.

Now let's move over to the federal side of things. So remember you went to district court, you presented your facts, then you didn't like the outcome of that court because they didn't rule in your favor. So you went to the circuit court of appeals, designated in one of the 12. The circuit courts in the area and you had them reexamine your facts and what the lower court said.

And guess what? Unfortunately, they also did not agree with you. They think that you were in the wrong and that sorry. We side with the government on this one. You lose. Well, now comes the time to ask the Supreme Court to hear your case.

But what is that process like? And here I'm going to read a word because well, I, you'll know why in a minute. So if you want the Supreme Court to hear your case, you have to file a petition and I'm going to read to you what that petition is called and then I'm going to tell you why nobody actually says it. So you are going to file what is called a petition for fair, sheer orary.

I said that as close as I'm going to say it. And don't worry. It's not just me. You can't say it. Most lawyers can say either, which is why we simply call it a writ of cert. Now you're petitioning the Supreme Court.

You're saying listen, I have gone through this long and tedious legal process. I truly believe my constitutional rights have been violated by the EPA. I need you to listen to this case because this case is bigger than me. This case is going to have implications for everybody in the country. Please take my case. That is what a writ of cert is.

So you send that to the court. Now, this is where when you hear people say, you know, I'm going to take it all the way to the Supreme Court and you can start thinking in your head. No, you're not because the odds are not in your favor. Every year, the Supreme Court justices, there are nine of them. They get seven to nine thousand writs of cert begging people to hear their cases.

Guess how many they take? They take about 70 to 80. That's about 1%. It's actually easier to get into Harvard, one of the hardest schools to get into than it is to have the Supreme Court hear your case. It is, again, odds are not in your favor.

But when they do look at a case, so they're getting all these and clerks help them review too. But when they are thinking of cases, they make their answering these three questions. Does this and I'm going to read it because I don't want to get it right. Does this raise a big federal or constitutional issue? Do lower courts disagree on the law?

And does this issue affect the whole country? Now the second one, do courts disagree on the law? That's really important. The lower courts, because if all these lower courts are coming to different decisions, that's going to signal to the justices of the Supreme Court that, hey, this is clearly a constitutional issue that is not, that is too ambiguous, it's too open-ended and people

aren't really understanding. And it is the Supreme Court's job, it's all courts' jobs at the Supreme Court specifically in constitutional issues. It is their job to interpret what the Constitution means, to interpret what those amendments actually mean in practice. So if the justices, if four of nine justices agree that your case should be heard, they

are going to grant you cert. And when you're granted cert, that means congrats, yay, they're going to take your case much rejoicing. This is huge. You are part of the 1%. Great. Let's pause there.

Let's go back to the state case. All right. So let's say you are fortunate enough to have the state Supreme Court hear your case. They also don't agree with you. Another loss, again, it's not going great for you, but you still have a chance to do exactly what the federal case did.

If your state-based or state-originated issue is still dealing with a constitutional issue, especially if you're saying, hey, the state tried to deny my constitutional rights, but hey, the 14th amendment says they have to obey the Constitution. That's part of my due process. That's still a federal issue. So you can do the same thing the federal case did.

And you can say, I'm going to write this writ of cert. I want you to take my case, please take my case, and you can decide, or they decide just like the federal case of whether or not they're going to take it. That would be like going to the principal, right? The Supreme Court's going to be your principal, but in the state case, you kind of have two because you have the state Supreme Court and you have the Supreme Court.

Now, sometimes what happens with the state case is the Supreme Court of the state refuses to hear it. And so then you petition the Supreme Court anyway and say like, hey, I think this is a big enough issue where the Supreme Court of my state should absolutely hear it. And then that's part of the Supreme Court case, which gets me to another issue. And I know it's a lot of information, but this is so important and you're going to dazzle

your friends and your teachers and your family members by knowing how this happens. So okay, what happens when you get to the Supreme Court? Just like the appeals or the secondary courts, they're not going to have you present witnesses or anything. They're going to be like a 90 minutes to like an hour and a half or sorry, that is 90 minutes to two hours like max.

There's only one I ever listened to that was longer. And it's going to be your attorneys giving their oral arguments. And it's going to be one side saying what they're there to argue for the other side and then the justices ask questions and then there's a rebuttal. It's not a super long process, even though it is like this huge deal. So afterwards the justices sit and they discuss it and sometimes weeks go by, sometimes months

go by, often months go by. And then they release their decisions usually on like a certain day of the week or like Mondays and Wednesdays and they'll release a bunch of their decisions at once. Now, you might think, okay, if you win your Supreme Court case, that's it. It's over. It's a victory.

And it is. But let's say you were one of those state cases where the state Supreme Court refused to hear your case. So you petitioned Supreme Court to hear the case, you say it's a big enough issue. I think the state Supreme Court should hear it. So if the United States Supreme Court agrees and says yes, they should hear it, that case

actually gets kicked back to the state Supreme Court and you have to go to court all over again. That's a lot. I know. So that's not the end of the line. And it happens actually with a lot, if not most Supreme Court cases, since you're fighting a lower court's decision, sometimes a Supreme Court is just saying, yeah, they have a really

good point. Now you have to go back to court and actually fight on the merits, fight on the new facts of the case and the new facts of the case is the Supreme Court saying, no, yeah, this is unconstitutional. It's absolutely unconstitutional. So then what's the point?

Why is the Supreme Court so important? Well, like I said, they're interpreting what the Constitution actually means, what that means in practice when it comes to the rights of the people and what they decide is going to be legal precedent, it's going to be case law. And that's going to apply to the entire country. There are people who have won cases because now their attorneys can point to a old Supreme

Court case, like an old, old, old one from like hundreds of years ago and say, well, remember when the Supreme Court said this, well, okay, that means that we need to use this ruling in our decision because the Supreme Court has already said this is unconstitutional. Okay? So that's a really big, big important detail that your lawsuit isn't just about one lawsuit. Your lawsuit can change the entire shape of every lawsuit to come after, but another side

don't. Every, you know, over time, sometimes a law is interpreted differently or new. There's new things that come to light or there's new considerations, especially with tech and stuff like that. You know, when it comes to free speech, there's been a lot of issue over, okay, well, when the amendments were written, obviously the founders weren't thinking about whether

or not cell phones count as Fourth Amendment, you know, digital footprints, digital communication is that count. Do we have free speech to that? All these like new issues that have to come. So sometimes an old court precedent is used or a similar case is brought about. And then the court at the time has a different decision.

And so it overturns an older Supreme Court precedent. It's crazy guys. And I know this was a lot of information and so I wanted to make sure I did it as best as I possibly could. There's some other nuances to it. I don't want to discuss because I want the basic premise to be understood.

So just to recap, remember, you've got the state based cases and then you have the federal based cases, but they both take that same path of trial court. The secondary appeals court, another appeals court. And then you have either state Supreme Court or regular Supreme Court and on the state side, you can have both. So that is how a case gets to the Supreme Court.

It has to go through all these lower courts first until finally the Supreme Court, hopefully, if you're one of the 1% says, this is a huge deal. We need to interpret this for the country. And so even though the Constitution, you know, that that is the law of the land, sometimes that law of the land need or needs interpretation. And a lot of times, states are very sneaky.

A lot of state governments will try to say, well, this doesn't apply to like the bill of rights doesn't apply to me or, you know, whatever, because that is a federal law and not like what's applicable in this state. And that's what the Supreme Court is often used and comes in and says, no, no, no. We have the 14th amendment that says, hey, states bill of rights counts in the states. And so there's a lot of cases like that, which is really, really interesting.

So if you ever want to become a lawyer someday or love the Constitution, understanding how the Supreme Court works is extremely important. And I know that that was a lot of information to take in, but again, I'm going to repeat it one more time. The main thing to take away from this is that, well, one, Supreme Court cases are very important. They impact how other cases in the future will be determined.

But all these cases have to go through lower courts first, and it has to be an issue big enough to impact the entire country. So with all that, I will wrap it up there. Hopefully your minds are not whirling. Maybe you can discuss this and discuss maybe some really important Supreme Court decisions at the dinner table as a family.

So I will leave it there. As always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, I will talk to you later.