The National Constitutional Center recently posted an article focusing on what the Supreme Court means to say when it rejects hearing a case on appeal. The Center's Lyle Denniston explains:
At the beginning of each term, in early October, the court turns down hundreds of cases that have built up on its docket over its summer recess. If it had to explain each refusal, the task would be simply unmanageable. But it is frustrating, to the public as a whole and to lawyers, lower court judges and journalists, when the court does not say why it denies review of a really big case, or cases.
That happened, on opening day this term, when the Justices turned aside seven appeals dealing with the issue of same-sex marriage. In each of those seven, coming from five different states, a federal appeals court had ruled unconstitutional a state’s ban on such marriages – and each appeals court had done so with a full opinion, going over all of the reasons.
The rest of the explanation can be found
here.
