U.S. Supreme Court Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon living the 'high life' in prison.

Background Check: Steve Bannon, a podcast host and a Donald Trump consultant refused to appear before the 6 January Committee. The House deemed that as contempt. He was indicted and a jury convicted him in July 2022.  He appealed a lower court’s decision to send him to jail in July, eight days from today. He appealed. That also failed, now he is expected to bring himself to incarceration halls. He still doesn’t want to go, so he has appealed to the Supreme Court.

How does the U.S. Supreme Court decide which cases to review? The following paragraphs, are from a novel about how the Court works.

Book Title: The Outsider

Author: Anthony Franze

Pages:  26-27

“Oliver Wendell Holmes once described the justices as “nine scorpions in a bottle,” but that seemed a better fit for his co-clerks, whose stingers were pointed in Gray’s direction. ………….. In a stroke of luck, the chief assigned Lauren to show him the ropes.

“All you need to know,” said Lauren in her ten-minute orientation, “is that there are five key tasks of a clerk: pool memos, death penalty stays, bench memos, drafting opinions and the most important task - whatever the hell the chief justice needs.”

“Pool memos are short memos we write that are used by all justices, not just the chief. They summarize each of the seven thousand requests the court gets from litigants asking the court to hear their cases. The justices take only about seventy cases, so the memos are an important part of the screening process.”

“We take only seventy out of seven thousand?” Gray asked.

“Yeah, ‘We are the one percent,’” Lauren said in her dry way. She explained that the clerks from all nine chambers split up the docket and wrote memos summarizing each case. They even made recommendations on whether the court should accept a case for review - whether to grant certionari, or cert. If the clerk recommended that the court deny cert, the case ended up on the “dead list.” No justice would ever evaluate the case. If a clerk recommended that the court grant cert, the case would appear on the “discuss list,” which the justices would go through at their secret conferences held about every other Friday.”

“Recommending that the court grant review is a huge deal and will get a lot of attention, so be super careful,” Lauren said. “In fact, if you’re gonna recommend a cert grant, you should come talk to me first.”

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Blogger Without Borders