Law Commons^™

The Limits Of The Olympian Court: Common Law Judging Versus Error Correction In The Supreme Court, Carolyn Shapiro

Carolyn Shapiro

Throughout its history, the Supreme Court has struggled to control its caseload and to avoid becoming a court of error correction. Instead, it applies its resources to matters of particular national importance and to promoting uniformity in the law. This Article argues that the Court's approach to maintaining uniformity fails to provide adequate guidance to the lower courts. The Court focuses on resolving disagreements among the lower courts over what rules and standards to apply. But the Court largely ignores the question of whether those directives are applied in a consistent or predictable way. As a result, there are areas …