19
of the judiciary. Due primarily to the fact that the Supreme Court reviews such a small
number of cases, the Circuit Courts of Appeals enjoy a degree of independence from the
High Court. Furthermore, the Circuit Courts of Appeals lack the accountability to the
other branches of government because their cases are not as closely scrutinized as the
Supreme Court ones. Ironically, the fact that the Supreme Court can control its own
docket and pick and choose the cases it wishes to adjudicate while the Circuit Courts
have no such luxury has provided the Circuits with insulation from Supreme Court
supervision. While the Supreme Court adjudicates approximately 200 cases each term,
the most recent statistics show the Circuit Courts adjudicated 56,534 cases in 2002 and
60,847 in 2003.
19
The sheer logistics of caseload management and the resulting lack of
inability of the Supreme Court to “supervise” the Circuits belies the superiority of the
Supreme Court implied by the linear and hierarchical organizational flow charts.
The consequence of the Supreme Court’s limited review of cases, coupled with its
inability to actually enforce its decisions on the Circuit Courts of Appeals, is that the
modern Circuit Courts of Appeals have become influential policy makers and have
amassed power that exceeds their originally intended, limited function of error correction.
For instance, in the immigration example, the Circuit Courts of Appeals simply have
more opportunities to make policy. The actual number of published immigration
decisions from the Circuit Courts of Appeals in the years 1990-2000 underscores the
extremely limited role of the Supreme Court in reviewing these types of cases.
20
In the
19
Statistics from the Office of the Judges Program, Statistics Division, Administrative Office of
the United States Courts
http://www.uscourts.gov/caseload2002/front/mar02txt.pdf
for 2002 and
http://www.uscourts.gov/judbus2003/front/caseload.pdf
for 2003.
20
As a rule of thumb, each circuit publishes roughly one third of their decisions. Many cases are
adjudicated without the circuit court having issued a published opinion. So the number of actual
immigration cases decided by the circuit courts is higher than the published opinions show.
Convention