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| History of the Supreme Court | Each year, the Supreme Court receives 7,000 or so writs of certiorari, which are petitions from parties seeking review of their cases. These requests do not result in automatic appeals. The Court will not necessarily hear the case just because a party wants to take its case "all the way to the Supreme Court." Instead, such a case must pass through the Court's showing process.
The showing process begins with the Court's law clerks, which separate through the petitions and settle upon a select few that they consider worthy of consideration by the justices. Inside a closed meeting room, the Chief Justice leads the meeting in which the Justices argue the petitions and choose aloud on which cases they find more important and deserving of deliberation. Selection begins with the Chief Justice and is followed by the Associate Justices according to seniority. The most junior Justice, now Stephen G. Breyer, takes the handwritten notes that will be passed to a clerk for public announcement of their nature of the petitions.
 To be judged, a case must receive at least four votes. Whether or not a case is accepted "strikes me as a rather subjective decision, made up in part of intuition and in part of legal judgment," Rehnquist wrote in his book, "The Supreme Court: How It Was, How It Is." In deciding whether to analysis a case, the Court will generally judge whether the legal question was decided differently by two lower courts and needs decree by a higher court, whether a lower court decision conflicts with an existing Supreme Court ruling, and whether the subject could have broader social meaning further than the interests of the two parties involved. Though, not all cases of important social issues needing decree are accepted by the Supreme Court.
The Court also gets another 1,200 applications of various kinds each year that can be acted upon by a particular Justice.
The Supreme Court is the highest court within the United States courts system and the powers divided to the judicial branch of the government are huge. As stated in the Constitution "the legal Power shall expand to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; to all Cases involving Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; to all Cases of admiralty and marine Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States; between Citizens of the same State asserting Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects." "In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the Supreme Court shall have unique Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before stated, the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."
While Congress has no power to change the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, it does control the Court's appellate jurisdiction. The basic statutes effective at this time in awarding and controlling jurisdiction of the Supreme Court may be found in various special statutes. Congress also has from time to time conferred upon the Supreme Court power to set down rules of procedure to be followed by the lower courts of the United States. Pursuant to these statutes, the Court has propagated rules governing civil and criminal cases in the district courts, bankruptcy proceedings, admiralty cases, appellate proceedings, and the trial of crimes before U.S. magistrate judges.
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