Nuts and Bolts is a recurring series by Stephen Wermiel providing insights into the mechanics of how the Supreme Court works.
One of the most critical aspects of Supreme Court procedures is the orders list.
It operates much like a traffic report, sorting cases into those that will be argued and those on which review is denied, and cleaning up numerous other details of the work of the justices.
Yet although it is a document publicly available on the Supreme Court’s website, it is little seen and even less understood by anyone other than avid followers of the court.
The orders list is the culmination of the regular flow of petitions by parties who lost in a lower court and are asking the Supreme Court to review and overturn the prior judgment. As SCOTUSblog readers are likely aware, these are called petitions for certiorari, a term derived from Latin meaning to be fully informed or to be certain.
During each term of the court, running from early October to the end of June or early July, the justices receive and act on about 4,000 such petitions (though this number may vary). The justices consider what action to take on the petitions at private conferences where only the nine of them are present. The conferences are held on Friday for much of the term and then on Thursdays once the court has completed oral arguments in the spring. If at least four justices vote to hear a petition, then the case will be scheduled for full briefing, oral argument, and eventual decision.
For each conference, there is a list of available cases to be considered, called the “conference list.” From the conference list, the justices narrow the pool down to a “discuss list,” meaning cases that will actively be considered at the conference. Petitions that no justice wanted to discuss are automatically denied.
To understand the orders list, it is helpful to review a recent example. The list typically has several different sections.
First is a list of summary dispositions. These involve petitions which the justices are able to resolve without receiving additional briefs or hearing oral argument. Often, the justices choose to vacate the lower court ruling that was the focal point of the petition and to send the case back to that lower court to apply a new Supreme Court precedent decided in another case.
On the orders list for April 20, 2026, for example, the justices vacated a decision in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit denied qualified immunity to two police officers and the Las Vegas Police Department. In Smith v. Scott the justices said the appeals court should decide the case over based on a different qualified immunity ruling issued by the Supreme Court a month earlier in the case of Zorn v. Linton.
The next section of the orders list is “orders in pending cases.” This heading may encompass a wide variety of orders. It includes requests by those filing petitions to keep portions of the court record sealed from public view. It includes the court’s denial of requests to file in “pauper” status by those who cannot afford to pay the $300 filing fee or the cost to print 40 copies of their petition (for the justices, their clerks, and court staff). The section may also include applications for a stay of a lower court order. And there are requests to file petitions after the deadline has expired; these are denied nearly 100% of the time.
This category also includes frequent requests by the federal government’s lawyer in the Supreme Court, the Office of the Solicitor General, to participate in oral arguments in which the federal government is not a party. In some instances, the court issues orders in this section dividing up oral argument time among those involved in a case.
Another important feature in “pending cases” is when the court asks the solicitor general’s views on whether the justices should hear a case with implications for federal law although the federal government may not be directly involved. This process even has its own name and acronym: call for the views of the solicitor general, or CVSG.
In many orders lists, the next section is “certiorari granted.” This is a list of cases that the court is setting for full briefing and oral argument. Often in the fall, the announcement of newly granted cases is released separately on Friday afternoon. This may give the lawyers in the case some extra time to get started on the deadlines for filing briefs. In the spring, the granted cases are part of the regular orders list; this is because the cases will not be argued until the next term, so the deadlines are not as pressing.
Granting certiorari usually involves a simple one-line order. But the court may also decide to limit the questions it plans to answer in a case, or it may decide to pose new questions crafted by the justices in addition to or in lieu of the questions presented by the parties.
The denial of petitions for certiorari is the next section. This is often the longest section because the vast majority of petitions are denied by the court. When the court declines to hear a case, the effect is to leave in place the prior ruling of the lower court. The justices have long explained that a denial of certiorari does not mean they agree with the lower court ruling; it simply indicates that there were not four justices who wanted to hear the case.
Justices may dissent from the denial of petitions and explain their disagreement in written opinions. In the current court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor is the most frequent practitioner of dissents from denial of certiorari. Sometimes the writing of a dissent may prompt other justices to write in support of the denial of certiorari. When these separate writings occur, they are usually appended to the very end of the orders list.
In what may seem a confusing practice, the court will deny a petition after noting that it has accepted a friend-of-the-court (amicus curiae) brief or that it has approved filing in pauper status. This oddity is because the justices still go through the rules for accepting additional briefs or granting pauper status even when they are going to turn down a petition.
At the end of the list of denials are orders with additional wrinkles – for instance, the petition is denied but one or more justices did not participate in the case. The justices do not give reasons for these recusals.
Toward the bottom there are also sections handling requests for special court orders. Typically the court denies requests for habeas corpus, mandamus, and any other unusual orders. The court also almost never grants petitions for rehearing and lists those denials without explanation.
The final item regularly on the orders list is “attorney discipline.” When a lawyer who is a member of the Supreme Court Bar has been suspended from practicing law by state bar officials, it is customary for the Supreme Court to prohibit that person from being able to practice in the high court.
Orders are an integral part of the court’s work. But they have not always been as important as they are today. Prior to 1925, the court had very little discretion over its docket and had to decide most of the cases that were presented. In the Judiciary Act of 1925, Congress gave the court most of the broad discretion it now has to turn away petitions without giving any kind of ruling on the issues. Once the court could turn away cases, then public notice of which cases the court would decide and which it would simply turn down became a critical step in its operating procedures.