Law Commons^™

Original Jurisdiction Deadlocks, Michael Coenen

Michael Coenen

When a member of the Supreme Court is unable to hear a case, the remaining Justices will occasionally split 4-4 on the case's merits. Normally, such a tie vote translates into a summary affirmance of the lower court ruling, but it remains an open question how the Court should deal with deadlock in the original jurisdiction context, where by definition there is no lower court ruling to affirm. The Court has from its inception lacked a clear and principled approach to original jurisdiction deadlocks (OJDs), and as a result it has dealt awkwardly with those it has confronted in the …