Supreme Court

How does the Supreme Court decide which cases to hear? Where do they make announcements once they have decided?

ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: From the article “Supreme Court of the United States” in Wikipedia: “A case is brought before the Supreme Court by way of: (1) a petition for writ of certiorari filed by a party to a case that has been decided by one of the United States courts of appeals or the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, or (in extremely rare cases) a case that is pending before a court of appeals but not yet decided, (2) a certified question or proposition of law from one of the United States courts of appeals, (3) a petition for writs of either mandamus, prohibition or habeas corpus (each of which is known as a petition for an extraordinary writ), or (4) a petition for writ of certiorari from a decision of one of the state courts, after all state appeals have been exhausted, involving an issue of Federal constitutional or statutory law.”
and …
“By custom, certiorari is granted on the vote of four of the nine Justices. In most cases, the writ is denied; the Supreme Court normally only considers matters of national or constitutional importance.”

There are also several excellet Supreme Court encyclopedias and reference works that go into more detail in the Reference Department.

At the Supreme Court web site http://www.supremecourtus.gov/ , you can find listings of “certiorari granted” from the “Orders and Journals” links, eventually getting to the “Order List.” The official published versions eventually end up in the “Orders” sections of the United States Reports, in the Law Library or in the Public Documents Department of Perkins/Bostock.