title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Article Three, Section 1 of the Constitution provides that justices "shall hold their offices during good behavior", which is understood to mean that they may serve for the remainder of their lives, until death; furthermore, the phrase is generally interpreted to mean that the only way justices can be removed from office is by Congress via the impeachment process. The Framers of the Constitution chose good behavior tenure to limit the power to remove justices and to ensure judicial independence. No constitutional mechanism exists for removing a justice who is permanently incapacitated by illness or injury, but unable (or unwilling) to resign. The only justice ever to be impeached was Samuel Chase, in 1804. The House of Representatives adopted eight articles of impeachment against him; however, he was acquitted by the Senate, and remained in office until his death in 1811. No subsequent effort to impeach a sitting justice has progressed beyond referral to the Judiciary Committee. (For example, William O. Douglas was the subject of hearings twice, in 1953 and again in 1970; and Abe Fortas resigned while hearings were being organized in 1969.)


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Because justices have indefinite tenure, timing of vacancies can be unpredictable. Sometimes they arise in quick succession, as in September 1971, when Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan II left within days of each other, the shortest period of time between vacancies in the court's history. Sometimes a great length of time passes between vacancies, such as the 11-year span, from 1994 to 2005, from the retirement of Harry Blackmun to the death of William Rehnquist, which was the second longest timespan between vacancies in the court's history. On average a new justice joins the Court about every two years.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Despite the variability, all but four presidents have been able to appoint at least one justice. William Henry Harrison died a month after taking office, although his successor (John Tyler) made an appointment during that presidential term. Likewise, Zachary Taylor died 16 months after taking office, but his successor (Millard Fillmore) also made a Supreme Court nomination before the end of that term. Andrew Johnson, who became president after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, was denied the opportunity to appoint a justice by a reduction in the size of the court. Jimmy Carter is the only person elected president to have left office after at least one full term without having the opportunity to appoint a justice. Presidents James Monroe, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and George W. Bush each served a full term without an opportunity to appoint a justice, but made appointments during their subsequent terms in office. No president who has served more than one full term has gone without at least one opportunity to make an appointment.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The U.S. Supreme Court currently consists of nine members: one chief justice and eight associate justices. The U.S. Constitution does not specify the size of the Supreme Court, nor does it specify any specific positions for the Court's members. However, the Constitution assumes the existence of the office of the chief justice, because it mentions in that "the Chief Justice" must preside over impeachment trials of the President of the United States. The power to define the Supreme Court's size and membership has been assumed to belong to Congress, which initially established a six-member Supreme Court composed of a chief justice and five associate justices through the Judiciary Act of 1789. The size of the court was first altered by the Midnight Judges Act of 1801 which would have reduced the size of the court to five members upon its next vacancy, but the Judiciary Act of 1802 promptly negated the 1801 act, restoring the court's size to six members before any such vacancy occurred. As the nation's boundaries grew across the continent and as Supreme Court justices in those days had to ride the circuit, an arduous process requiring long travel on horseback or carriage over harsh terrain that resulted in months-long extended stays away from home, Congress added justices to correspond with the growth: seven in 1807, nine in 1837, and ten in 1863.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: At the behest of Chief Justice Chase and in an attempt by the Republican Congress to limit the power of Democrat Andrew Johnson, Congress passed the Judicial Circuits Act of 1866, providing that the next three justices to retire would not be replaced, which would thin the bench to seven justices by attrition. Consequently, one seat was removed in 1866 and a second in 1867. Soon after Johnson left office, the new president Ulysses S. Grant, a Republican, signed into law the Judiciary Act of 1869. This returned the number of justices to nine (where it has since remained), and allowed Grant to immediately appoint two more judges.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to expand the court in 1937. His proposal envisioned the appointment of one additional justice for each incumbent justice who reached the age of 70years 6months and refused retirement, up to a maximum bench of 15 justices. The proposal was ostensibly to ease the burden of the docket on elderly judges, but the actual purpose was widely understood as an effort to "pack" the court with justices who would support Roosevelt's New Deal. The plan, usually called the "court-packing plan", failed in Congress after members of Roosevelt's own Democratic Party believed it to be unconstitutional. It was defeated 70–20 in the Senate, and the Senate Judiciary Committee reported that it was "essential to the continuance of our constitutional democracy" that the proposal "be so emphatically rejected that its parallel will never again be presented to the free representatives of the free people of America.”


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The rise and solidification of a conservative majority on the court during the presidency of Donald Trump sparked a liberal response in the form of calls for court-packing. Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced a bill in April 2021 to expand the Supreme Court from nine to 13 seats, but Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi refused to bring it to the floor and relatively few Democrats backed it. Shortly after taking office in January 2021, Joe Biden established a presidential commission to study possible reforms to the Supreme Court. The commission's December 2021 final report discusses but takes no position on expanding the size of the court. Whether it would be constitutional to expand the size of the Supreme Court in ways understood to be designed to "pack" it with justices that would rule more favorably on a president's agenda or to simply change the ideological composition of the court remains unclear.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: There are currently nine justices on the Supreme Court: Chief Justice John Roberts and eight associate justices. Among the current members of the court, Clarence Thomas is the longest-serving justice, with a tenure of days () as of ; the most recent justice to join the court is Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose tenure began on June 30, 2022.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: This graphical timeline depicts the length of each current Supreme Court justice's tenure (not seniority, as the chief justice has seniority over all associate justices regardless of tenure) on the court:


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The court currently has five male and four female justices. Among the nine justices, there are two African American justices (Justices Thomas and Jackson) and one Hispanic justice (Justice Sotomayor). One of the justices was born to at least one immigrant parent: Justice Alito's father was born in Italy.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: At least six justices are Roman Catholics, one is Jewish, and one is Protestant. It is unclear whether Neil Gorsuch considers himself a Catholic or an Episcopalian. Historically, most justices have been Protestants, including 36 Episcopalians, 19 Presbyterians, 10 Unitarians, 5 Methodists, and 3 Baptists. The first Catholic justice was Roger Taney in 1836, and 1916 saw the appointment of the first Jewish justice, Louis Brandeis. In recent years the historical situation has reversed, as most recent justices have been either Catholic or Jewish.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Three justices are from the state of New York, two are from Washington, D.C., and one each is from New Jersey, Georgia, Colorado, and Louisiana. Eight of the current justices received their law degree from an Ivy League law school: Neil Gorsuch, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and John Roberts from Harvard; plus Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas from Yale. Only Amy Coney Barrett did not; she received her law degree at Notre Dame.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Previous positions or offices, judicial or federal government, held by the current justices prior to joining the Court include:


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: For much of the court's history, every justice was a man of Northwestern European descent, and almost always Protestant. Diversity concerns focused on geography, to represent all regions of the country, rather than religious, ethnic, or gender diversity. Racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in the court increased in the late 20th century. Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American justice in 1967. Sandra Day O'Connor became the first female justice in 1981. In 1986, Antonin Scalia became the first Italian-American justice. Marshall was succeeded by African-American Clarence Thomas in 1991. O'Connor was joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first Jewish woman on the Court, in 1993. After O'Connor's retirement Ginsburg was joined in 2009 by Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and Latina justice, and in 2010 by Elena Kagan. After Ginsburg's death on September 18, 2020, Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed as the fifth woman in the court's history on October 26, 2020. Ketanji Brown Jackson is the sixth woman and first African-American woman on the Court.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: There have been six foreign-born justices in the court's history: James Wilson (1789–1798), born in Caskardy, Scotland; James Iredell (1790–1799), born in Lewes, England; William Paterson (1793–1806), born in County Antrim, Ireland; David Brewer (1889–1910), born to American missionaries in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (now Izmir, Turkey); George Sutherland (1922–1939), born in Buckinghamshire, England; and Felix Frankfurter (1939–1962), born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now in Austria).


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Since 1789, about one-third of the justices have been U.S. military veterans. Samuel Alito is the only veteran currently serving on the court. Retired justices Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy also served in the U.S. military.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: There are currently four living retired justices of the Supreme Court of the United States: Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, and Stephen Breyer. As retired justices, they no longer participate in the work of the Supreme Court, but may be designated for temporary assignments to sit on lower federal courts, usually the United States Courts of Appeals. Such assignments are formally made by the chief justice, on request of the chief judge of the lower court and with the consent of the retired justice. In recent years, Justice Souter has frequently sat on the First Circuit, the court of which he was briefly a member before joining the Supreme Court; and Justice O'Connor often sat with several Courts of Appeal before withdrawing from public life in 2018. The status of a retired justice is analogous to that of a circuit or district court judge who has taken senior status, and eligibility of a Supreme Court justice to assume retired status (rather than simply resign from the bench) is governed by the same age and service criteria.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: In recent times, justices tend to strategically plan their decisions to leave the bench with personal, institutional, ideological, partisan and sometimes even political factors playing a role. The fear of mental decline and death often motivates justices to step down. The desire to maximize the court's strength and legitimacy through one retirement at a time, when the court is in recess and during non-presidential election years suggests a concern for institutional health. Finally, especially in recent decades, many justices have timed their departure to coincide with a philosophically compatible president holding office, to ensure that a like-minded successor would be appointed.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: For the most part, the day-to-day activities of the justices are governed by rules of protocol based upon the seniority of justices. The chief justice always ranks first in the order of precedence—regardless of the length of their service. The associate justices are then ranked by the length of their service. The chief justice sits in the center on the bench, or at the head of the table during conferences. The other justices are seated in order of seniority. The senior-most associate justice sits immediately to the chief justice's right; the second most senior sits immediately to their left. The seats alternate right to left in order of seniority, with the most junior justice occupying the last seat. Therefore, starting with the October 2022 term, the court will sit as follows from left to right, from the perspective of those facing the court: Barrett, Gorsuch, Sotomayor, Thomas (most senior associate justice), Roberts (chief justice), Alito, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Jackson. Likewise, when the members of the court gather for official group photographs, justices are arranged in order of seniority, with the five most senior members seated in the front row in the same order as they would sit during Court sessions, and the four most junior justices standing behind them, again in the same order as they would sit during Court sessions.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: In the justices' private conferences, current practice is for them to speak and vote in order of seniority, beginning with the chief justice first and ending with the most junior associate justice. By custom, the most junior associate justice in these conferences is charged with any menial tasks the justices may require as they convene alone, such as answering the door of their conference room, serving beverages and transmitting orders of the court to the clerk. Justice Joseph Story served the longest as junior justice, from February 3, 1812, to September 1, 1823, for a total of 4,228 days. Justice Stephen Breyer follows very closely behind serving from August 3, 1994, to January 31, 2006, for a total of 4,199 days. Justice Elena Kagan comes in at a distant third serving from August 6, 2010, to April 10, 2017, for a total of 2,439 days.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: As of 2021, associate justices receive a yearly salary of $268,300 and the chief justice is paid $280,500 per year. Article III, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits Congress from reducing the pay for incumbent justices. Once a justice meets age and service requirements, the justice may retire. Judicial pensions are based on the same formula used for federal employees, but a justice's pension, as with other federal courts judges, can never be less than their salary at the time of retirement.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Although justices are nominated by the president in power, and receive confirmation by the Senate, justices do not represent or receive official endorsements from political parties, as is accepted practice in the legislative and executive branches. Jurists are informally categorized in legal and political circles as being judicial conservatives, moderates, or liberals. Such leanings generally refer to legal outlook rather than a political or legislative one. The nominations of justices are endorsed by individual politicians in the legislative branch who vote their approval or disapproval of the nominated justice. The ideologies of jurists can be measured and compared with several metrics, including the Segal–Cover score, Martin-Quinn score, and Judicial Common Space score.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Following the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2022, the court consists of six justices appointed by Republican presidents and three appointed by Democratic presidents. It is popularly accepted that Chief Justice Roberts and associate justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, appointed by Republican presidents, compose the court's conservative wing, and that Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, appointed by Democratic presidents, compose the court's liberal wing; Justice Jackson is expected to join them. Gorsuch had a track record as a reliably conservative judge in the 10th circuit. Kavanaugh was considered one of the most conservative judges in the DC Circuit prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court. Likewise, Barrett's brief track record on the Seventh Circuit is conservative.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Prior to Justice Ginsburg's death, Chief Justice Roberts was considered the court's median justice (in the middle of the ideological spectrum, with four justices more liberal and four more conservative than him), making him the ideological center of the court. Since Ginsburg's death and Barrett's confirmation, Kavanaugh is the court's median justice, based on the criterion that he has been in the majority more than any other justice.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Tom Goldstein argued in an article in "SCOTUSblog" in 2010, that the popular view of the Supreme Court as sharply divided along ideological lines and each side pushing an agenda at every turn is "in significant part a caricature designed to fit certain preconceptions." He pointed out that in the 2009 term, almost half the cases were decided unanimously, and only about 20% were decided by a 5-to-4 vote. Barely one in ten cases involved the narrow liberal/conservative divide (fewer if the cases where Sotomayor recused herself are not included). He also pointed to several cases that defied the popular conception of the ideological lines of the court.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Goldstein further argued that the large number of pro-criminal-defendant summary dismissals (usually cases where the justices decide that the lower courts significantly misapplied precedent and reverse the case without briefing or argument) were an illustration that the conservative justices had not been aggressively ideological. Likewise, Goldstein stated that the critique that the liberal justices are more likely to invalidate acts of Congress, show inadequate deference to the political process, and be disrespectful of precedent, also lacked merit: Thomas has most often called for overruling prior precedent (even if long standing) that he views as having been wrongly decided, and during the 2009 term Scalia and Thomas voted most often to invalidate legislation.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: According to statistics compiled by "SCOTUSblog", in the twelve terms from 2000 to 2011, an average of 19 of the opinions on major issues (22%) were decided by a 5–4 vote, with an average of 70% of those split opinions decided by a court divided along the traditionally perceived ideological lines (about 15% of all opinions issued). Over that period, the conservative bloc has been in the majority about 62% of the time that the court has divided along ideological lines, which represents about 44% of all the 5–4 decisions.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: In the October 2010 term, the court decided 86 cases, including 75 signed opinions and 5 summary reversals (where the court reverses a lower court without arguments and without issuing an opinion on the case). Four were decided with unsigned opinions, two cases affirmed by an equally divided Court, and two cases were dismissed as improvidently granted. Justice Kagan recused herself from 26 of the cases due to her prior role as United States Solicitor General. Of the 80 cases, 38 (about 48%, the highest percentage since the October 2005 term) were decided unanimously (9–0 or 8–0), and 16 decisions were made by a 5–4 vote (about 20%, compared to 18% in the October 2009 term, and 29% in the October 2008 term). However, in fourteen of the sixteen 5–4 decisions, the court divided along the traditional ideological lines (with Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan on the liberal side, and Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito on the conservative, and Kennedy providing the "swing vote"). This represents 87% of those 16 cases, the highest rate in the past 10 years. The conservative bloc, joined by Kennedy, formed the majority in 63% of the 5–4 decisions, the highest cohesion rate of that bloc in the Roberts Court.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The October 2017 term had a low rate of unanimous rulings, with only 39% of the cases decided by unanimous rulings, the lowest percentage since the October 2008 term when 30% of rulings were unanimous. Chief Justice Roberts was in the majority most often (68 out of 73 cases, or 93.2%), with retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy in second (67 out of 73 cases, or 91.8%); this was typical of the Roberts Court, in which Roberts and Kennedy have been in the majority most frequently in all terms except for the 2013 and 2014 terms (though Kennedy was in the top on both those terms). Justice Sotomayor was the justice least likely to be in the majority (in 50 out of 73 cases, or 68.5%). The highest agreement between justices was between Ginsburg and Sotomayor, who agreed on 95.8% of the cases, followed by Thomas and Alito agreeing on 93% of cases. There were 19 cases that were decided by a 5–4 vote (26% of the total cases); 74% of those cases (14 out of 19) broke along ideological lines, and for the first time in the Roberts Court, all of those resulted in a conservative majority, with Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch on the majority.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The October 2018 term, which saw the replacement of Anthony Kennedy by Brett Kavanaugh, once again saw a low rate of unanimity: only 28 of 71 decided cases were decided by a unanimous court, about 39% of the cases. Of these, only 19 cases had the justices in total agreement. Chief Justice Roberts was once again the justice most often in the majority (61 out of 72 cases, or 85% of the time). Although Kavanaugh had a higher percentage of times in the majority, he did not participate in all cases, voting in the majority 58 out of 64 times, or 91% of the cases in which he participated. Of the justices who participated in all 72 cases, Kagan and Alito tied in second place, voting in the majority 59 out of 72 times (or 82% of the time). Looking only at cases that were not decided unanimously, Roberts and Kavanaugh were the most frequently in the majority (33 cases, with Roberts being in the majority in 75% of the divided cases, and Kavanaugh in 85% of the divided cases he participated in). Of 20 cases that were decided by a vote of 5–4, eight featured the conservative justices in the majority (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh), and eight had the liberal justices (Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) joined by a conservative: Gorsuch was the most frequent, joining them four times, and the remaining conservative justices joining the liberals once each. The remaining four cases were decided by different coalitions. The highest agreement between justices was between Roberts and Kavanaugh, who agreed at least in judgement 94% of the time; the second highest agreement was again between Ginsburg and Sotomayor, who agreed 93% of the time. The highest rate of full agreement was between Ginsburg and Kagan (82% of the time), closely followed by Roberts and Alito, Ginsburg and Sotomayor, and Breyer and Kagan (81% of the time). The largest rate of disagreement was between Thomas and both Ginsburg and Sotomayor; Thomas disagreed with each of them 50% of the time.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: By the completion of the 2021 term, the percent of 6–3 decisions favoring the conservative majority had reached 30%, with the percent of unanimous cases having dropped to the same number.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The Supreme Court first met on February 1, 1790, at the Merchants' Exchange Building in New York City. When Philadelphia became the capital, the court met briefly in Independence Hall before settling in Old City Hall from 1791 until 1800. After the government moved to Washington, D.C., the court occupied various spaces in the Capitol building until 1935, when it moved into its own purpose-built home. The four-story building was designed by Cass Gilbert in a classical style sympathetic to the surrounding buildings of the Capitol and Library of Congress, and is clad in marble. The building includes the courtroom, justices' chambers, an extensive law library, various meeting spaces, and auxiliary services including a gymnasium. The Supreme Court building is within the ambit of the Architect of the Capitol, but maintains its own Supreme Court Police, separate from the Capitol Police.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Located across First Street from the United States Capitol at One First Street NE and Maryland Avenue, the building is open to the public from 9am to 4:30pm weekdays but closed on weekends and holidays. Visitors may not tour the actual courtroom unaccompanied. There is a cafeteria, a gift shop, exhibits, and a half-hour informational film. When the court is not in session, lectures about the courtroom are held hourly from 9:30am to 3:30pm and reservations are not necessary. When the court is in session the public may attend oral arguments, which are held twice each morning (and sometimes afternoons) on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays in two-week intervals from October through late April, with breaks during December and February. Visitors are seated on a first-come first-served basis. One estimate is there are about 250 seats available. The number of open seats varies from case to case; for important cases, some visitors arrive the day before and wait through the night. From mid-May until the end of June, the court releases orders and opinions beginning at 10am, and these 15 to 30-minute sessions are open to the public on a similar basis. Supreme Court Police are available to answer questions.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Congress is authorized by Article III of the federal Constitution to regulate the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction. The Supreme Court has original and exclusive jurisdiction over cases between two or more states but may decline to hear such cases. It also possesses original but not exclusive jurisdiction to hear "all actions or proceedings to which ambassadors, other public ministers, consuls, or vice consuls of foreign states are parties; all controversies between the United States and a State; and all actions or proceedings by a State against the citizens of another State or against aliens."


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: In 1906, the court asserted its original jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for contempt of court in "United States v. Shipp". The resulting proceeding remains the only contempt proceeding and only criminal trial in the court's history. The contempt proceeding arose from the lynching of Ed Johnson in Chattanooga, Tennessee the evening after Justice John Marshall Harlan granted Johnson a stay of execution to allow his lawyers to file an appeal. Johnson was removed from his jail cell by a lynch mob, aided by the local sheriff who left the prison virtually unguarded, and hanged from a bridge, after which a deputy sheriff pinned a note on Johnson's body reading: "To Justice Harlan. Come get your nigger now." The local sheriff, John Shipp, cited the Supreme Court's intervention as the rationale for the lynching. The court appointed its deputy clerk as special master to preside over the trial in Chattanooga with closing arguments made in Washington before the Supreme Court justices, who found nine individuals guilty of contempt, sentencing three to 90 days in jail and the rest to 60 days in jail. In all other cases, the court has only appellate jurisdiction, including the ability to issue writs of mandamus and writs of prohibition to lower courts. It considers cases based on its original jurisdiction very rarely; almost all cases are brought to the Supreme Court on appeal. In practice, the only original jurisdiction cases heard by the court are disputes between two or more states.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The court's appellate jurisdiction consists of appeals from federal courts of appeal (through "certiorari", certiorari before judgment, and certified questions), the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (through certiorari), the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico (through "certiorari"), the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands (through "certiorari"), the District of Columbia Court of Appeals (through "certiorari"), and "final judgments or decrees rendered by the highest court of a State in which a decision could be had" (through "certiorari"). In the last case, an appeal may be made to the Supreme Court from a lower state court if the state's highest court declined to hear an appeal or lacks jurisdiction to hear an appeal. For example, a decision rendered by one of the Florida District Courts of Appeal can be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court if (a) the Supreme Court of Florida declined to grant "certiorari", e.g. "Florida Star v. B. J. F.", or (b) the district court of appeal issued a per curiam decision simply affirming the lower court's decision without discussing the merits of the case, since the Supreme Court of Florida lacks jurisdiction to hear appeals of such decisions. The power of the Supreme Court to consider appeals from state courts, rather than just federal courts, was created by the Judiciary Act of 1789 and upheld early in the court's history, by its rulings in "Martin v. Hunter's Lessee" (1816) and "Cohens v. Virginia" (1821). The Supreme Court is the only federal court that has jurisdiction over direct appeals from state court decisions, although there are several devices that permit so-called "collateral review" of state cases. It has to be noted that this "collateral review" often only applies to individuals on death row and not through the regular judicial system.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Since Article Three of the United States Constitution stipulates that federal courts may only entertain "cases" or "controversies", the Supreme Court cannot decide cases that are moot and it does not render advisory opinions, as the supreme courts of some states may do. For example, in "DeFunis v. Odegaard", , the court dismissed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a law school affirmative action policy because the plaintiff student had graduated since he began the lawsuit, and a decision from the court on his claim would not be able to redress any injury he had suffered. However, the court recognizes some circumstances where it is appropriate to hear a case that is seemingly moot. If an issue is "capable of repetition yet evading review", the court would address it even though the party before the court would not themselves be made whole by a favorable result. In "Roe v. Wade", , and other abortion cases, the court addresses the merits of claims pressed by pregnant women seeking abortions even if they are no longer pregnant because it takes longer than the typical human gestation period to appeal a case through the lower courts to the Supreme Court. Another mootness exception is voluntary cessation of unlawful conduct, in which the court considers the probability of recurrence and plaintiff's need for relief.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The United States is divided into thirteen circuit courts of appeals, each of which is assigned a "circuit justice" from the Supreme Court. Although this concept has been in continuous existence throughout the history of the republic, its meaning has changed through time. Under the Judiciary Act of 1789, each justice was required to "ride circuit", or to travel within the assigned circuit and consider cases alongside local judges. This practice encountered opposition from many justices, who cited the difficulty of travel. Moreover, there was a potential for a conflict of interest on the court if a justice had previously decided the same case while riding circuit. Circuit riding ended in 1901, when the Circuit Court of Appeals Act was passed, and circuit riding was officially abolished by Congress in 1911.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The circuit justice for each circuit is responsible for dealing with certain types of applications that, under the court's rules, may be addressed by a single justice. These include applications for emergency stays (including stays of execution in death-penalty cases) and injunctions pursuant to the All Writs Act arising from cases within that circuit, and routine requests such as requests for extensions of time. In the past, circuit justices also sometimes ruled on motions for bail in criminal cases, writs of "habeas corpus", and applications for writs of error granting permission to appeal.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: A circuit justice may sit as a judge on the Court of Appeals of that circuit, but over the past hundred years, this has rarely occurred. A circuit justice sitting with the Court of Appeals has seniority over the chief judge of the circuit. The chief justice has traditionally been assigned to the District of Columbia Circuit, the Fourth Circuit (which includes Maryland and Virginia, the states surrounding the District of Columbia), and since it was established, the Federal Circuit. Each associate justice is assigned to one or two judicial circuits.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Five of the current justices are assigned to circuits on which they previously sat as circuit judges: Chief Justice Roberts (D.C. Circuit), Justice Sotomayor (Second Circuit), Justice Alito (Third Circuit), Justice Barrett (Seventh Circuit), and Justice Gorsuch (Tenth Circuit).


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: A term of the Supreme Court commences on the first Monday of each October, and continues until June or early July of the following year. Each term consists of alternating periods of around two weeks known as "sittings" and "recesses"; justices hear cases and deliver rulings during sittings, and discuss cases and write opinions during recesses.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Nearly all cases come before the court by way of petitions for writs of "certiorari", commonly referred to as "cert"; the court may review any case in the federal courts of appeals "by writ of "certiorari" granted upon the petition of any party to any civil or criminal case." The court may only review "final judgments rendered by the highest court of a state in which a decision could be had" if those judgments involve a question of federal statutory or constitutional law. The party that appealed to the court is the "petitioner" and the non-mover is the "respondent". All case names before the court are styled "petitioner" v. "respondent", regardless of which party initiated the lawsuit in the trial court. For example, criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of the state and against an individual, as in "State of Arizona v. Ernesto Miranda". If the defendant is convicted, and his conviction then is affirmed on appeal in the state supreme court, when he petitions for cert the name of the case becomes "Miranda v. Arizona".


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: There are situations where the Court has original jurisdiction, such as when two states have a dispute against each other, or when there is a dispute between the United States and a state. In such instances, a case is filed with the Supreme Court directly. Examples of such cases include "United States v. Texas", a case to determine whether a parcel of land belonged to the United States or to Texas, and "Virginia v. Tennessee", a case turning on whether an incorrectly drawn boundary between two states can be changed by a state court, and whether the setting of the correct boundary requires Congressional approval. Although it has not happened since 1794 in the case of "Georgia v. Brailsford", parties in an action at law in which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction may request that a jury determine issues of fact. "Georgia v. Brailsford" remains the only case in which the court has empaneled a jury, in this case a special jury. Two other original jurisdiction cases involve colonial era borders and rights under navigable waters in "New Jersey v. Delaware", and water rights between riparian states upstream of navigable waters in "Kansas v. Colorado".


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: A cert petition is voted on at a session of the court called conference. A conference is a private meeting of the nine justices by themselves; the public and the justices' clerks are excluded. The rule of four permits four of the nine justices to grant a writ of "certiorari". If it is granted, the case proceeds to the briefing stage; otherwise, the case ends. Except in death penalty cases and other cases in which the court orders briefing from the respondent, the respondent may, but is not required to, file a response to the cert petition. The court grants a petition for cert only for "compelling reasons", spelled out in the court's Rule 10. Such reasons include:


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: When a conflict of interpretations arises from differing interpretations of the same law or constitutional provision issued by different federal circuit courts of appeals, lawyers call this situation a "circuit split"; if the court votes to deny a cert petition, as it does in the vast majority of such petitions that come before it, it does so typically without comment. A denial of a cert petition is not a judgment on the merits of a case, and the decision of the lower court stands as the case's final ruling. To manage the high volume of cert petitions received by the court each year (of the more than 7,000 petitions the court receives each year, it will usually request briefing and hear oral argument in 100 or fewer), the court employs an internal case management tool known as the "cert pool"; currently, all justices except for Justices Alito and Gorsuch participate in the cert pool.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: When the court grants a cert petition, the case is set for oral argument. Both parties will file briefs on the merits of the case, as distinct from the reasons they may have argued for granting or denying the cert petition. With the consent of the parties or approval of the court, "amici curiae", or "friends of the court", may also file briefs. The court holds two-week oral argument sessions each month from October through April. Each side has thirty minutes to present its argument (the court may choose to give more time, although this is rare), and during that time, the justices may interrupt the advocate and ask questions. In 2019, the court adopted a rule generally allowing advocates to speak uninterrupted for the first two minutes of their argument. The petitioner gives the first presentation, and may reserve some time to rebut the respondent's arguments after the respondent has concluded. "Amici curiae" may also present oral argument on behalf of one party if that party agrees. The court advises counsel to assume that the justices are familiar with and have read the briefs filed in a case.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: In order to plead before the court, an attorney must first be admitted to the court's bar. Approximately 4,000 lawyers join the bar each year. The bar contains an estimated 230,000 members. In reality, pleading is limited to several hundred attorneys. The rest join for a one-time fee of $200, earning the court about $750,000 annually. Attorneys can be admitted as either individuals or as groups. The group admission is held before the current justices of the Supreme Court, wherein the chief justice approves a motion to admit the new attorneys. Lawyers commonly apply for the cosmetic value of a certificate to display in their office or on their resume. They also receive access to better seating if they wish to attend an oral argument. Members of the Supreme Court Bar are also granted access to the collections of the Supreme Court Library.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: At the conclusion of oral argument, the case is submitted for decision. Cases are decided by majority vote of the justices. After the oral argument is concluded, usually in the same week as the case was submitted, the justices retire to another conference at which the preliminary votes are tallied and the court sees which side has prevailed. One of the justices in the majority is then assigned to write the court's opinion, also known as the "majority opinion", an assignment made by the most senior justice in the majority, with the Chief Justice always being considered the most senior. Drafts of the court's opinion circulate among the justices until the court is prepared to announce the judgment in a particular case.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Justices are free to change their votes on a case up until the decision is finalized and published. In any given case, a justice is free to choose whether or not to author an opinion or else simply join the majority or another justice's opinion. There are several primary types of opinions:


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: It is the court's practice to issue decisions in all cases argued in a particular term by the end of that term. Within that term, the court is under no obligation to release a decision within any set time after oral argument. Since recording devices are banned inside the courtroom of the Supreme Court Building, the delivery of the decision to the media is done via paper copies and is known as the "Running of the Interns".


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: It is possible that through recusals or vacancies the court divides evenly on a case. If that occurs, then the decision of the court below is affirmed, but does not establish binding precedent. In effect, it results in a return to the "status quo ante". For a case to be heard, there must be a quorum of at least six justices. If a quorum is not available to hear a case and a majority of qualified justices believes that the case cannot be heard and determined in the next term, then the judgment of the court below is affirmed as if the court had been evenly divided. For cases brought to the Supreme Court by direct appeal from a United States District Court, the chief justice may order the case remanded to the appropriate U.S. Court of Appeals for a final decision there. This has only occurred once in U.S. history, in the case of "United States v. Alcoa" (1945).


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The court's opinions are published in three stages. First, a slip opinion is made available on the court's web site and through other outlets. Next, several opinions and lists of the court's orders are bound together in paperback form, called a preliminary print of "United States Reports", the official series of books in which the final version of the court's opinions appears. About a year after the preliminary prints are issued, a final bound volume of "U.S. Reports" is issued by the Reporter of Decisions. The individual volumes of "U.S. Reports" are numbered so that users may cite this set of reports (or a competing version published by another commercial legal publisher but containing parallel citations) to allow those who read their pleadings and other briefs to find the cases quickly and easily. , there are:


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: , the "U.S. Reports" have published a total of 30,161 Supreme Court opinions, covering the decisions handed down from February 1790 to March 2012. This figure does not reflect the number of cases the court has taken up, as several cases can be addressed by a single opinion (see, for example, "Parents v. Seattle", where "Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education" was also decided in the same opinion; by a similar logic, "Miranda v. Arizona" actually decided not only "Miranda" but also three other cases: "Vignera v. New York", "Westover v. United States", and "California v. Stewart"). A more unusual example is The Telephone Cases, which are a single set of interlinked opinions that take up the entire 126th volume of the "U.S. Reports".


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Opinions are also collected and published in two unofficial, parallel reporters: "Supreme Court Reporter", published by West (now a part of Thomson Reuters), and "United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers' Edition" (simply known as "Lawyers' Edition"), published by LexisNexis. In court documents, legal periodicals and other legal media, case citations generally contain cites from each of the three reporters; for example, citation to "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" is presented as "Citizens United v. Federal Election Com'n", 585 U.S. 50, 130 S. Ct. 876, 175 L. Ed. 2d 753 (2010), with "S. Ct." representing the "Supreme Court Reporter", and "L. Ed." representing the "Lawyers' Edition".


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Lawyers use an abbreviated format to cite cases, in the form " U.S. , ()", where is the volume number, is the page number on which the opinion begins, and is the year in which the case was decided. Optionally, is used to "pinpoint" to a specific page number within the opinion. For instance, the citation for "Roe v. Wade" is 410 U.S. 113 (1973), which means the case was decided in 1973 and appears on page 113 of volume 410 of "U.S. Reports". For opinions or orders that have not yet been published in the preliminary print, the volume and page numbers may be replaced with "___"


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The federal court system and the judicial authority to interpret the Constitution received little attention in the debates over the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. The power of judicial review, in fact, is nowhere mentioned in it. Over the ensuing years, the question of whether the power of judicial review was even intended by the drafters of the Constitution was quickly frustrated by the lack of evidence bearing on the question either way. Nevertheless, the power of judiciary to overturn laws and executive actions it determines are unlawful or unconstitutional is a well-established precedent. Many of the Founding Fathers accepted the notion of judicial review; in Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote: "A Constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, and the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute."


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The Supreme Court firmly established its power to declare laws unconstitutional in "Marbury v. Madison" (1803), consummating the American system of checks and balances. In explaining the power of judicial review, Chief Justice John Marshall stated that the authority to interpret the law was the particular province of the courts, part of the "duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." His contention was not that the court had privileged insight into constitutional requirements, but that it was the constitutional duty of the judiciary, as well as the other branches of government, to read and obey the dictates of the Constitution.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Since the founding of the republic, there has been a tension between the practice of judicial review and the democratic ideals of egalitarianism, self-government, self-determination and freedom of conscience. At one pole are those who view the federal judiciary and especially the Supreme Court as being "the most separated and least checked of all branches of government." Indeed, federal judges and justices on the Supreme Court are not required to stand for election by virtue of their tenure "during good behavior", and their pay may "not be diminished" while they hold their position (). Although subject to the process of impeachment, only one justice has ever been impeached and no Supreme Court justice has been removed from office. At the other pole are those who view the judiciary as the least dangerous branch, with little ability to resist the exhortations of the other branches of government.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The Supreme Court cannot directly enforce its rulings; instead, it relies on respect for the Constitution and for the law for adherence to its judgments. One notable instance of nonacquiescence came in 1832, when the state of Georgia ignored the Supreme Court's decision in "Worcester v. Georgia". President Andrew Jackson, who sided with the Georgia courts, is supposed to have remarked, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" Some state governments in the South also resisted the desegregation of public schools after the 1954 judgment "Brown v. Board of Education". More recently, many feared that President Nixon would refuse to comply with the court's order in "United States v. Nixon" (1974) to surrender the Watergate tapes. Nixon ultimately complied with the Supreme Court's ruling.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Supreme Court decisions can be purposefully overturned by constitutional amendment, something that has happened on six occasions:


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: When the court rules on matters involving the interpretation of laws rather than of the Constitution, simple legislative action can reverse the decisions (for example, in 2009 Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, superseding the limitations given in "Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co." in 2007). Also, the Supreme Court is not immune from political and institutional consideration: lower federal courts and state courts sometimes resist doctrinal innovations, as do law enforcement officials.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: In addition, the other two branches can restrain the court through other mechanisms. Congress can increase the number of justices, giving the president power to influence future decisions by appointments (as in Roosevelt's Court Packing Plan discussed above). Congress can pass legislation that restricts the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and other federal courts over certain topics and cases: this is suggested by language in of Article Three, where the appellate jurisdiction is granted "with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." The court sanctioned such congressional action in the Reconstruction Era case "ex parte McCardle" (1869), although it rejected Congress' power to dictate how particular cases must be decided in "United States v. Klein" (1871).


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: On the other hand, through its power of judicial review, the Supreme Court has defined the scope and nature of the powers and separation between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government; for example, in "United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp." (1936), "Dames & Moore v. Regan" (1981), and notably in "Goldwater v. Carter" (1979), which effectively gave the presidency the power to terminate ratified treaties without the consent of Congress. The court's decisions can also impose limitations on the scope of Executive authority, as in "Humphrey's Executor v. United States" (1935), the "Steel Seizure Case" (1952), and "United States v. Nixon" (1974).


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Each Supreme Court justice hires several law clerks to review petitions for writ of "certiorari", research them, prepare bench memorandums, and draft opinions. Associate justices are allowed four clerks. The chief justice is allowed five clerks, but Chief Justice Rehnquist hired only three per year, and Chief Justice Roberts usually hires only four. Generally, law clerks serve a term of one to two years.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The first law clerk was hired by Associate Justice Horace Gray in 1882. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Louis Brandeis were the first Supreme Court justices to use recent law school graduates as clerks, rather than hiring "a stenographer-secretary." Most law clerks are recent law school graduates.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The first female clerk was Lucile Lomen, hired in 1944 by Justice William O. Douglas. The first African-American, William T. Coleman Jr., was hired in 1948 by Justice Felix Frankfurter. A disproportionately large number of law clerks have obtained law degrees from elite law schools, especially Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago, Columbia, and Stanford. From 1882 to 1940, 62% of law clerks were graduates of Harvard Law School. Those chosen to be Supreme Court law clerks usually have graduated in the top of their law school class and were often an editor of the law review or a member of the moot court board. By the mid-1970s, clerking previously for a judge in a federal court of appeals had also become a prerequisite to clerking for a Supreme Court justice.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Ten Supreme Court justices previously clerked for other justices: Byron White for Frederick M. Vinson, John Paul Stevens for Wiley Rutledge, William Rehnquist for Robert H. Jackson, Stephen Breyer for Arthur Goldberg, John Roberts for William Rehnquist, Elena Kagan for Thurgood Marshall, Neil Gorsuch for both Byron White and Anthony Kennedy, Brett Kavanaugh also for Kennedy, Amy Coney Barrett for Antonin Scalia, and Ketanji Brown Jackson for Stephen Breyer. Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh served under Kennedy during the same term. Gorsuch is the first justice to clerk for and subsequently serve alongside the same justice, serving alongside Kennedy from April 2017 through Kennedy's retirement in 2018. With the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh, for the first time a majority of the Supreme Court was composed of former Supreme Court law clerks (Roberts, Breyer, Kagan, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, now joined by Barrett and Jackson).


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Several current Supreme Court justices have also clerked in the federal courts of appeals: John Roberts for Judge Henry Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Justice Samuel Alito for Judge Leonard I. Garth of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Elena Kagan for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Neil Gorsuch for Judge David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Brett Kavanaugh for Judge Walter Stapleton of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Judge Alex Kozinski of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Amy Coney Barrett for Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Clerks hired by each of the justices of the Supreme Court are often given considerable leeway in the opinions they draft. "Supreme Court clerkship appeared to be a nonpartisan institution from the 1940s into the 1980s," according to a study published in 2009 by the law review of Vanderbilt University Law School. "As law has moved closer to mere politics, political affiliations have naturally and predictably become proxies for the different political agendas that have been pressed in and through the courts," former federal court of appeals judge J. Michael Luttig said. David J. Garrow, professor of history at the University of Cambridge, stated that the court had thus begun to mirror the political branches of government. "We are getting a composition of the clerk workforce that is getting to be like the House of Representatives," Professor Garrow said. "Each side is putting forward only ideological purists."


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: According to the "Vanderbilt Law Review" study, this politicized hiring trend reinforces the impression that the Supreme Court is "a superlegislature responding to ideological arguments rather than a legal institution responding to concerns grounded in the rule of law." A poll conducted in June 2012 by "The New York Times" and CBS News showed just 44% of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing. Three-quarters said justices' decisions are sometimes influenced by their political or personal views. One study, using four-year panel data, found that public opinion of the Supreme Court was highly stable over time.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The Supreme Court has been the object of criticisms and controversies on a range of issues. Among them:


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The Supreme Court has been criticized for not keeping within Constitutional bounds by engaging in judicial activism, rather than merely interpreting law and exercising judicial restraint. Claims of judicial activism are not confined to any particular ideology. An often cited example of conservative judicial activism is the 1905 decision in "Lochner v. New York", which has been criticized by many prominent thinkers, including Robert Bork, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Chief Justice John Roberts, and which was reversed in the 1930s.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: An often cited example of liberal judicial activism is "Roe v. Wade" (1973), which legalized abortion on the basis of the "right to privacy" inferred from the Fourteenth Amendment, a reasoning that some critics argued was circuitous. Legal scholars, justices, and presidential candidates have criticized the Roe decision. The progressive "Brown v. Board of Education" decision banning racial segregation in public schools has been criticized by conservatives such as Patrick Buchanan, former associate justice nominee and solicitor general Robert Bork and former presidential contender Barry Goldwater.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: More recently, "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" was criticized for expanding upon the precedent in "First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti" (1978) that the First Amendment applies to corporations President Abraham Lincoln warned, referring to the "Dred Scott" decision, that if government policy became "irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court... the people will have ceased to be their own rulers." Former justice Thurgood Marshall justified judicial activism with these words: "You do what you think is right and let the law catch up."


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: During different historical periods, the court has leaned in different directions. Critics from both sides complain that activist judges abandon the Constitution and substitute their own views instead. Critics include writers such as Andrew Napolitano, Phyllis Schlafly, Mark R. Levin, Mark I. Sutherland, and James MacGregor Burns. Past presidents from both parties have attacked judicial activism, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. Failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork wrote: "What judges have wrought is a coup d'état,– slow-moving and genteel, but a coup d'état nonetheless." Brian Leiter wrote that "Given the complexity of the law and the complexity involved in saying what really happened in a given dispute, all judges, and especially those on the Supreme Court, often have to exercise a quasi-legislative power," and "Supreme Court nominations are controversial because the court is a super-legislature, and because its moral and political judgments are controversial."


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Court decisions have been criticized for failing to protect individual rights: the "Dred Scott" (1857) decision upheld slavery; "Plessy v. Ferguson" (1896) upheld segregation under the doctrine of "separate but equal"; "Kelo v. City of New London" (2005) was criticized by prominent politicians, including New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, as undermining property rights. Some critics suggest the 2009 bench with a conservative majority has "become increasingly hostile to voters" by siding with Indiana's voter identification laws which tend to "disenfranchise large numbers of people without driver's licenses, especially poor and minority voters", according to one report. Senator Al Franken criticized the court for "eroding individual rights." However, others argue that the court is "too protective" of some individual rights, particularly those of people accused of crimes or in detention. For example, Chief Justice Warren Burger was an outspoken critic of the exclusionary rule, and Justice Scalia criticized the court's decision in "Boumediene v. Bush" for being "too protective" of the rights of Guantanamo detainees, on the grounds that habeas corpus was "limited" to sovereign territory.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: This criticism is related to complaints about judicial activism. George Will wrote that the court has an "increasingly central role in American governance." It was criticized for intervening in bankruptcy proceedings regarding ailing carmaker Chrysler Corporation in 2009. A reporter wrote that "Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's intervention in the Chrysler bankruptcy" left open the "possibility of further judicial review" but argued overall that the intervention was a proper use of Supreme Court power to check the executive branch. Warren E. Burger, before becoming Chief Justice, argued that since the Supreme Court has such "unreviewable power", it is likely to "self-indulge itself", and unlikely to "engage in dispassionate analysis." Larry Sabato wrote "excessive authority has accrued to the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court."


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The 2021–2022 term of the Court was the first full term following the appointment of three judges by Republican president Donald Trump — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — which created a six-strong conservative majority on the Court. Subsequently, at the end of the term, the Court issued a number of decisions at the end of the term that favored this conservative majority while significantly changing the landscape with respect to rights. These included "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization" which overturned "Roe v. Wade" and "Planned Parenthood v. Casey" in recognizing abortion is not a constitutional right, "New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen" which made public possession of guns a protected right under the Second Amendment, "Carson v. Makin" and "Kennedy v. Bremerton School District" which both weakened the Establishment Clause separating church and state, and "West Virginia v. EPA" which weakened the power of executive branch agencies to interpret their congressional mandate. Several observers considered this a shift of government power into the Supreme Court, and a "judicial coup" by some members of Congress including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, urging action to reform the Supreme Court.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: British constitutional scholar Adam Tomkins sees flaws in the American system of having courts (and specifically the Supreme Court) act as checks on the Executive and Legislative branches; he argues that because the courts must wait, sometimes for years, for cases to navigate their way through the system, their ability to restrain other branches is severely weakened. In contrast, various other countries have a dedicated constitutional court that has original jurisdiction on constitutional claims brought by persons or political institutions; for example, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, which can declare a law unconstitutional when challenged.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: There has been debate throughout American history about the boundary between federal and state power. While Framers such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton argued in "The Federalist Papers" that their then-proposed Constitution would not infringe on the power of state governments, others argue that expansive federal power is good and consistent with the Framers' wishes. The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution explicitly grants "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The court has been criticized for giving the federal government too much power to interfere with state authority. One criticism is that it has allowed the federal government to misuse the Commerce Clause by upholding regulations and legislation which have little to do with interstate commerce, but that were enacted under the guise of regulating interstate commerce; and by voiding state legislation for allegedly interfering with interstate commerce. For example, the Commerce Clause was used by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the Endangered Species Act, thus protecting six endemic species of insect near Austin, Texas, despite the fact that the insects had no commercial value and did not travel across state lines; the Supreme Court let that ruling stand without comment in 2005. Chief Justice John Marshall asserted Congress's power over interstate commerce was "complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations, other than are prescribed in the Constitution." Justice Alito said congressional authority under the Commerce Clause is "quite broad"; modern-day theorist Robert B. Reich suggests debate over the Commerce Clause continues today.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Advocates of states' rights such as constitutional scholar Kevin Gutzman have also criticized the court, saying it has misused the Fourteenth Amendment to undermine state authority. Justice Brandeis, in arguing for allowing the states to operate without federal interference, suggested that states should be laboratories of democracy. One critic wrote "the great majority of Supreme Court rulings of unconstitutionality involve state, not federal, law." Others see the Fourteenth Amendment as a positive force that extends "protection of those rights and guarantees to the state level." More recently, the issue of federal power is central in the prosecution of "Gamble v. United States", which is examining the doctrine of "separate sovereigns", whereby a criminal defendant can be prosecuted by a state court and then by a federal court.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The court has been criticized for keeping its deliberations hidden from public view. According to a review of Jeffrey Toobin's 2007 expose ""; "Its inner workings are difficult for reporters to cover, like a closed 'cartel', only revealing itself through 'public events and printed releases, with nothing about its inner workings.'" The reviewer writes: "few (reporters) dig deeply into court affairs. It all works very neatly; the only ones hurt are the American people, who know little about nine individuals with enormous power over their lives." Larry Sabato complains about the court's "insularity"; a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll conducted in 2010 found that 61% of American voters agreed that televising Court hearings would "be good for democracy", and 50% of voters stated they would watch Court proceedings if they were televised. More recently, several justices have appeared on television, written books and made public statements to journalists. In a 2009 interview on "C-SPAN", journalists Joan Biskupic of "USA Today" and Lyle Denniston of "SCOTUSblog" argued that the court is a "very open" institution with only the justices' private conferences inaccessible to others. In October 2010, the court began the practice of posting on its website recordings and transcripts of oral arguments on the Friday after they occur.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Some Court decisions have been criticized for injecting the court into the political arena, and deciding questions that are the purview of the other two branches of government. The "Bush v. Gore" decision, in which the Supreme Court intervened in the 2000 presidential election and effectively chose George W. Bush over Al Gore, has been criticized extensively, particularly by liberals. Another example are Court decisions on apportionment and re-districting: in "Baker v. Carr", the court decided it could rule on apportionment questions; Justice Frankfurter in a "scathing dissent" argued against the court wading into so-called political questions.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Senator Arlen Specter said the court should "decide more cases"; on the other hand, although Justice Scalia acknowledged in a 2009 interview that the number of cases that the court heard then was smaller than when he first joined the Supreme Court, he also stated that he had not changed his standards for deciding whether to review a case, nor did he believe his colleagues had changed their standards. He attributed the high volume of cases in the late 1980s, at least in part, to an earlier flurry of new federal legislation that was making its way through the courts.


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: Critic Larry Sabato wrote: "The insularity of lifetime tenure, combined with the appointments of relatively young attorneys who give long service on the bench, produces senior judges representing the views of past generations better than views of the current day." Sanford Levinson has been critical of justices who stayed in office despite medical deterioration based on longevity. James MacGregor Burns stated lifelong tenure has "produced a critical time lag, with the Supreme Court institutionally almost always behind the times." Proposals to solve these problems include term limits for justices, as proposed by Levinson and Sabato and a mandatory retirement age proposed by Richard Epstein, among others. However, others suggest lifetime tenure brings substantial benefits, such as impartiality and freedom from political pressure. Alexander Hamilton in "Federalist 78" wrote "nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence as permanency in office."


title: Supreme Court of the United States

text: The 21st century has seen increased scrutiny of justices accepting expensive gifts and travel. All of the members of the Roberts Court have accepted travel or gifts. In 2012, Justice Sonia Sotomayor received $1.9million in advances from her publisher Knopf Doubleday. Justice Scalia and others took dozens of expensive trips to exotic locations paid for by private donors. Private events sponsored by partisan groups that are attended by both the justices and those who have an interest in their decisions have raised concerns about access and inappropriate communications. Stephen Spaulding, the legal director at Common Cause, said: "There are fair questions raised by some of these trips about their commitment to being impartial." Additional concerns have been raised at the potential conflict of Justice's being swayed through their spouses method of income and connection to cases, as a majority of the information is redacted from the Justice's ethical disclosure forms.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Jojo Rabbit is a 2019 comedy-drama film written and directed by Taika Waititi, adapted from Christine Leunens's 2008 book "Caging Skies". Roman Griffin Davis portrays the title character, Johannes "Jojo" Betzler, a ten-year-old Hitler Youth member who finds out that his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic. He must then question his beliefs while dealing with the intervention of his imaginary friend (Waititi), a fanciful version of Adolf Hitler with a comedic stance on the politics of the war. The film also stars Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson, Stephen Merchant, and Alfie Allen.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Waititi wrote the screenplay in 2011, a year after his mother described the premise of "Caging Skies". He rewrote the first draft, which as a rough adaptation of the dark-toned source material did not contain much comedy; it was also in the rewritten version that Adolf's character was included. Waititi recalled the pitching process as exhausting. In 2012, it landed on the Black List, where it remained in a development limbo until several years later when Fox Searchlight Pictures showed interest in it. A tight casting schedule started in 2018, and the film started principal photography in the Czech Republic in May 2018, finishing two months later. Post-production included adding the visual effects, editing done by Tom Eagles, as well as a score composed by Michael Giacchino.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: "Jojo Rabbit" had its world premiere at the 44th Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2019, where it won the Grolsch People's Choice Award. It was later released theatrically in the United States on October 18. It was chosen by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute as one of the ten best films of the year. The film received mostly critical acclaim, though there were a few polarized critical reviews due to its comedic treatment of the subject of Nazism. Among its numerous accolades, the film won the Best Adapted Screenplay, while also being nominated for five other awards, including Best Picture, at the 92nd Academy Awards.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: During the collapse of Nazi Germany in the fictional city of Falkenheim, ten-year-old Johannes "Jojo" Betzler joins the "Deutsches Jungvolk", the junior section of the Hitler Youth. Heavily indoctrinated with Nazi ideals, he has an imaginary friend named Adolf, a buffoonish Adolf Hitler. Though a fanatic, at a training camp run by Captain Klenzendorf, he is nicknamed "Jojo Rabbit" after refusing to kill a rabbit to prove his worthiness. Pepped up by Adolf Hitler, he returns to prove himself, throwing a "Stielhandgranate" by himself that explodes at his feet, leaving him scarred and limping. His mother Rosie insists to the now-demoted Klenzendorf that Jojo still be included, thus he is given small tasks like spreading propaganda leaflets and collecting scrap for the war effort.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Alone at home one day, Jojo discovers Elsa Korr, a teenage Jewish girl and his late sister Inge's former classmate, hiding behind the walls of Inge's attic bedroom. Jojo is both terrified of and aggressive towards Elsa. The two are left at an impasse, as the revelation of Rosie's hiding of Elsa would lead to the execution of all three of them. Inspired by an offhand rant by Klenzendorf, Jojo continues to interact with her to uncover her "Jew secrets" and make a picture book titled "Yoohoo Jew", so he can "expose" the Jewish people, allowing the public to easily recognize her kind. Despite this, he finds himself clashing with innocence, and starts forming a friendship with her. Elsa is both saddened and amused by Jojo's radical beliefs, using surreal antisemitic canards to challenge his dogmatism. Jojo slowly becomes infatuated with the caring and engaging Elsa, frequently forging love letters from her fiancé Nathan, and begins questioning his beliefs, causing Adolf Hitler to scold him over his diminishing patriotism.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Gradually, Rosie is revealed to be part of the German resistance to Nazism; among her tasks is spreading anti-Nazi messages around town. One afternoon while she is out, the Gestapo come to investigate; Klenzendorf arrives and helps Jojo and Elsa deceive the Gestapo regarding Elsa's identity. Later, Jojo finds Rosie executed at a gallows in the public square. Devastated, he returns home and tries to stab Elsa before breaking down in tears. Elsa comforts him and also reveals that Jojo's lost father has been working against Hitler from abroad. Jojo's beliefs on Nazism quickly shift, and he starts seeing the regime's inhumanity. With no money, the pair starts scavenging food from waste bins around the city.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Following Hitler's suicide, the Allies initiate an offensive on Falkenheim. Weak in power, the civilian population, including the "Jungvolk", is armed to battle. Despondent, Jojo hides until it ends, with the Allies winning. As a "Jungvolk", he is seized by Soviet soldiers alongside Klenzendorf, who tells Jojo to look after Elsa and tears off Jojo's "Jungvolk" coat while calling him a Jew so that the soldiers do not harm him; Klenzendorf is then executed by firing squad. Fearing that Elsa will leave him alone now that she can be free, Jojo tells her Germany won the war. Recognizing her despair, he forges a letter from Nathan, claiming that he and Jojo have figured out a way to smuggle her to Paris. Elsa confesses that Nathan died of tuberculosis the previous year. Jojo tells her he loves her, and she tells him she loves him as a brother. A disheveled Adolf angrily confronts Jojo for siding with Elsa, but Jojo kicks him out a window, forever banishing his toxic imaginary friend. Outside, Elsa sees American soldiers and realizes the truth, slapping Jojo in the face for lying. They then dance, now free.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Additionally, identical twins Gilby and Hardy Griffin Davis, younger brothers of Roman Griffin Davis, portray a series of Hitler Youth doubles in the care of "Fräulein" Rahm in cameo appearances. Joe Weintraub, Brian Caspe, Gabriel Andrews, and Billy Rayner portray Junker, Mueller, Klum, and Frosch, Deertz's fellow Gestapo agents. Robert East portrays the supporting character Herr Grusch. Victoria Hogan portrays an unnamed woman. Other supporting roles include Luke Brandon Field as "Jungvolk" senior Christoph, Sam Haygarth as Christoph's friend Hans, Stanislav Callas as the soldier that dragged Jojo, Christian Howlings as the boy who accidentally fires a "Panzerschreck" with Yorki, as well as Curtis Matthew as Jojo's doctor.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Rachel House starred in a scene as an American soldier who gave a speech about America saving the day in the immediate aftermath of the war. The scene was deleted from the released version, and House expressed relief over the ultimate decision, calling the scene "clever but [...] completely unneeded." Although she did not appear in the final film, she was said to be an important participant in the project, particularly to Davis, to whom she became an acting coach.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Waititi had the idea for "Jojo Rabbit" in 2010, when his mother, Robin Cohen, introduced him to Christine Leunens' 2008 novel "Caging Skies". Bored with generic World War II stories that were told through the perspectives of soldiers and survivors, and aided by the background of his grandfather once fighting against the Nazis, he decided to adapt the novel. The taboo subject matter did not prevent him from pursuing the project: he looked at it as a motivation and thought of it as a challenge to be bold in filmmaking. He also considered the film a "love letter to all mothers", with a loving mother character present in the film. Waititi compared the premise of the screenplay with the Nickelodeon cartoon "Rugrats", which portrays violence through the fantastical lens of a child: "In a lot of ways I wanted to keep some sort of innocence around that stuff." A juvenile lens also meant an honest depiction of Nazism for Waititi: "Children, they don't fuck around. They will straight-up say to you, 'You are ugly.' Or, 'You are a bad dad,' or 'you betrayed me.' Some of it makes no sense, but at least they're being honest about their feelings." Another inspiration came from reading that 66% of American millennials had never heard of or had no knowledge of the Auschwitz concentration camp; with "Jojo Rabbit", he hoped the memories of the victims would remain forever and that conversations about the topic would not stop.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Shortly after Waititi had the idea for the adaptation, he sent an email to Leunens, and the screenplay was written in 2011. Waititi thought it was good timing, with various prejudices and extremism on the rise at the time. He insisted that slapstick was a fine way of telling a story with dark themes like World War II: "The world needs ridiculous films, because the world is ridiculous." The first draft did not contain Hitler, but Waititi rewrote the whole thing again shortly thereafter; the first draft lacked comedy, due to it being a rough adaptation from "Caging Skies", which Waititi described as a complete drama. Waititi decided not to make "Jojo Rabbit" a "straight-out drama" as it would make the film cliché: he instead used humor to build the narrative, then introduced drama to shock the audience. Some of the characters' names were taken from Waititi's friends, he noted. Leunens described it as faithful to the source material, yet original, comparing it to the painting "Guernica". Cohen praised the creation of Adolf and the cartoonish depiction of Nazis. "Badlands" (1973) was an inspiration for the relationship between Jojo and Elsa, while "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" (1974) inspired Rosie's character. Colorized documentaries such as "World War II in Colour" (2008–2009) helped Waititi "to get a sense of how things really looked": colorful and vibrant. Regarding storyboards, Waititi instructed artist Andrej Kostic only if the scene had a number of actors; this includes the final battle scene.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: The premise of the film meant difficulty in garnering interest from the film industry. Waititi stated that he did not do pitches: "I just sent the script out and let that do the talking. It's very hard to start a conversation with, 'It's about a little boy in the Hitler Youth.' [...] And then when I say, 'Oh, but don't worry, it's got humor in it,' it just gets worse." Nearly losing hope, he initially thought of just producing it independently in New Zealand. The project gained attention when it landed on the Black List of top unproduced screenplays in 2012. In February of that year at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, CineMart showed interest in the script. Despite this, the film remained in development limbo; Waititi went on with other projects like "What We Do in the Shadows" (2014) and "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" (2016). While Waititi's film "" (2017) began production, Fox Searchlight Pictures showed interest in "Jojo Rabbit" after searching for "more auteur-driven movies with challenging concepts." Contrary to popular belief that "Ragnarok" sparked interest in Waititi, Searchlight looked at his earlier works, such as "Boy" (2010). TSG Entertainment later joined the project with a budget of $14 million, $800,000 of which was directed towards the art department. In total, pre-production took two months.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Waititi initially wanted to film "Jojo Rabbit" in Berlin, a place he had a deep connection with financing from Studio Babelsberg. However, due to human rights and filming restrictions in Germany, with minors only able to work three hours a day, he decided to move filming to the Czech Republic. Babelsberg was credited with assisting development alongside the New Zealand Film Commission. The Czech Film Fund was credited for giving the film's crew production incentives. Production services throughout filming were provided by Czech Anglo Productions. Waititi-affiliated Defender Films and Piki Films were also credited as production companies.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: In 2018, casting associates were dispatched to schools in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Germany, the United States, and Canada to find the right actor to portray Jojo Betzler. Waititi wanted an actor "who could embody the character's pinwheeling mix of blind gusto and untamed emotions in stride", while also depicting Jojo's coming-of-age transformation in a way that blended well with the film's "deep" themes. Waititi and the casting team, led by casting director Des Hamilton, watched about 1,000 audition tapes, and later accepted Roman Griffin Davis, who was initially being auditioned for "Ford v Ferrari", but later also auditioned for "Jojo Rabbit". According to producer Carthew Neal, Davis had the charisma and enthusiasm Jojo's character projects, but was also able to mix a variety of emotions, further enriching the film's "deep" themes. Davis stated that portraying Jojo was a challenge as he is a conflicted character. He guided himself by researching the Hitler Youth. As a newcomer, he received immense support from the cast members. Davis joined the project six weeks before filming; he was one of the latest actors to be cast despite being in the lead role.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Waititi created Elsa Korr as a character with "the steely strength and self-possession that defuses Jojo's distrust", a mysterious yet humane outlook. Thomasin McKenzie, a New Zealand-born actress Waititi had known for a long time, was chosen to portray Elsa as a "really pretty, very cool girl who has this hard attitude", which hopefully would make Jojo's infatuation towards her in the film understandable. McKenzie did research on World War II from the perspective of a Jewish girl, and she created the character of Elsa by herself, with Waititi giving her only a teaser of how he imagined Elsa. Waititi also asked her to watch the film "Heathers" (1988), which has a character he envisioned Elsa to be.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: In March 2018, it was revealed that Waititi would direct, write, co-produce, and co-star in the film as Adolf. Speaking of the context of the role, Waititi stated, "It's my version of [...] a lonely boy's best version of his hero, which is really his dad," referring to the fact that in the film, Jojo is desperate to join Hitler's ranks during World War II. Searchlight decided that they would only make the film if Waititi portrayed Adolf; Waititi reluctantly agreed and recalled being embarrassed on set. He also stated he did not do much research on Hitler "because I just didn't think he deserved [the effort]." The cast members recalled being shocked the first time they saw Waititi dressed as Adolf.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Also in March, Scarlett Johansson was cast as Rosie for what Waititi described as "this sort of goofy quality about her that I always really wanted to see in a film". Although the film's premise was new to her, Johansson stated that she immediately fell in love with the character. and said that the screenplay "has a lot of humanity." The following month, Sam Rockwell was cast as Captain Klenzendorf. He was "reticent" at the time, like most of the other actors, but he chose to join the project because he said the role "has a juxtaposition", specifically pointing at the Klenzendorf's homosexuality, which according to him is an oxymoron. Rockwell looked for inspiration from comedians like Bill Murray and Walter Matthau (from the 1976 film "The Bad News Bears"), as he felt they resembled his assigned character. He also looked to the film's other characters for inspiration.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: In June 2018, Alfie Allen was cast as Klenzendorf's companion Freddy Finkel. Though Finkel was a new and risky role for Allen, the familial dynamic of the set made it easier for him. The same month, Stephen Merchant was cast as Captain Herman Deertz. He said that he became interested in the film due to its coming-of-age nature, and thought that Waititi's blend of humor and tragedy was seamless, comparing its satirical style with that of "Dr. Strangelove". Soon, Rebel Wilson joined the project as "Fräulein" Rahm.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Casting in Prague was led by Maya Kvetny, with Kristýna Poliček assisting. Additional casting was done by Shayna Markowitz, Stephanie Gorin, and Stu Turner. Casting for the extras were done by Deedee Casting Management; children extras were cast by A-Casting.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: "Jojo Rabbit" was credited as a co-production between the United States, New Zealand, and the Czech Republic.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Principal photography for the film occurred between May 28 and July 21, 2018, at various places in Prague, Žatec, Úštěk, Kytín, Dolní Beřkovice, Hořín, Lenešice, and the Petschek Palace. The former Lenešice sugar factory was used to film the war scenes. Production designer Ra Vincent chose these pre-war, unbombed places "because it had so much character and it felt like the most German of all the Czech towns we visited, with lots of German-style baroque architecture" The Barrandov Studios were also used for filming most of the interior scenes, which Vincent thought of as a great choice, considering Nazi propaganda used to be filmed there. Vincent chose Úštěk to film the exterior due to the "ornate" color palette of the architecture, said to connect with Jojo's character.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Waititi prohibited cell phone usage on set in order to retain focus and create a calming environment. He allowed the crew and actors to experiment with their work or characters by themselves, as he had no strict edicts for how the film should unfold. This was also stated to be a third reason for the cell phone prohibition. Other directors, including Quentin Tarantino, have used this rule before. By minimizing directions for the cast members, Waititi hoped to avoid stiff performances. He also did not show the full picture of Rosie when she was hanged, thinking it was unethical to showcase the deaths of family members.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Due to labor laws on child actors, the crew was only able to film eight or nine hours a day, causing stress for the adult actors as they would have to work with body doubles for certain periods of time. The actors described having a fun experience on set, saying Waititi was engaging to work with. McKenzie further elaborated that it was "easy-going and fun", as it allowed her to "explore the character and try different things". These, along with doing rehearsals, were part of an effort to make the child actors feel comfortable so they would act more naturally.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Mihai Mălaimare Jr. was enlisted as the film's cinematographer while he was doing reshoots for "The Hate U Give" in Atlanta, and he joined the project five days later. He agreed to depict "Jojo Rabbit" in a colorful and vibrant way, a primary motif of the film, taking inspiration from several colorized documentaries. He also took inspiration from a film he had previously worked on, "Youth Without Youth" (2007), which featured colorful World War II footage, contrasting the typical desaturated and grayscale historical footage. "Cabaret" (1972) was also a visual reference used for the cinematography. Despite this, Mălaimare arranged for the melancholic scenes to look more desaturated, corresponding to Jojo's emotions and showing the passage of time. He and Waititi also agreed not to visually exaggerate scenes with Adolf. Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa's images of children during World War II also served as inspiration for the cinematography style: "They were still playing, and they were still doing normal kid stuff, [but] the closer you look at the photo, [...] you realize something is wrong—like, 'Oh, in this one, they are wearing gas masks,' or 'They are playing close to a pile of bomb'—all these situations that we felt were very close to ["Jojo Rabbit"]." Around 60 similar stills from Magnum Photos and Flickr were also printed to be analyzed for inspiration.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Mălaimare and Waititi also agreed on the decision not to use hand-held cameras, in order to retain the film's classical style. Equipped with a dolly (a golf cart for scenes in the forest), an Arri Alexa SXT and Mini with Super 35 format was used. Around five tests were implemented to determine the aspect ratio for the film; a anamorphic format was chosen, considering that there were lots of scenes with two people indoors. The anamorphic format was favored due to its "velvety" tone, focus breathing, as well as authentic bokeh. Lenses include the Hawk V-Lite 1.3x anamorphic, Vantage One T1 spherical, and Leitz Summilux-C. The stopped down T1 was used for scenes in small or low-light areas, in order to give them a wide feel. Mălaimare worked with digital imaging technician (DIT) Eli Berg to seamlessly transition between scenes using different lenses. Though point-of-view shots were used, the main approach in making the film first-person on Jojo is to lower the camera to Davis's height. Waititi also allowed the actors to also give cinematographic advice, some of which were better than Waititi's suggestions, per Mălaimare. Symmetry and horizons are the main composition approaches to the cinematography, a major contributor to the narrative flow. The film was mostly shot using a multiple-camera setup so that close-up and wide shots could be done simultaneously.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Exterior scenes rarely used artificial lighting: scenes in the forest, for example, solely used the sun. The final sequence of the battle scene, which took five or six takes to accomplish, used three extra lights, but they were merely supplements to the sun. The scene where Jojo is having dinner with Rosie used an extensive lighting kit, mainly consisting of a chandelier and two practical lights, lighting the entirety of the setting; one of them dimmed, and tungsten lights to give the characters a softer and warmer lighting in the close-up shots. Small five-watt LED lights were used as lighting for the actors in scenes at Elsa's secret room. In that setting, Mălaimare decided to use a medium-bright petrol lamp as the key light, whereas a lighting was used to indicate dusk; candles act as supplements.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Visual effects supervisor Jason Chen had previously worked with Waititi. He joined the project after working on "Bumblebee". The goal was to create a "seamless illusion", balancing realism and surrealism. In total, there were about 200 visual effects shots, "about half of which were big invisible set extensions and often done by a [...] team of in house compositors" led by previous Chen collaborator Kenneth Quinn Brown. Chen worked with Clear Angle Studios to set up 3D scanners on tripods at Žatec. The scanners shoot laser beams, rotating 360 degrees, scanning the surrounding architecture in order to give an accurate representation of them. They also scanned Czech streets with historical relevance to "Jojo Rabbit", especially the square used for Jojo's town, which was once a frequent place for Hitler to hold rallies. A major contributor to the visual effects was Luma Pictures, which split work between Los Angeles and Melbourne. Luma used blue screens to incorporate elements like explosions, tanks, smoke, and gunfire in post-production. The glow of bombs going off in the distance, meanwhile, used matte paintings. They also incorporated snow into scenes that were actually shot during the summer, but were supposed to depict winter in "Jojo Rabbit"'s universe. This was achievable by photographing snow on the streets and adding it to the film, a technique known as "background plate." Additional effects were done by Picture Shop VFX. In total, visual effects took a year to finish.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Mayes C. Rubeo, who had previously collaborated with Waititi in "Ragnarok", became "Jojo Rabbit"'s costume designer. In an "intensive" conversation about the costumes, Waititi favored "formal, elegant" fashion, as it matched the kind of clothing people wore in that era, according to his research. He also wanted a design that symbolized the joy of childhood: bright, vivid colors, stressing the ambition to contrast typical historical films. Rubeo interpreted these as Italian neorealism, a filmmaking style popular in the 1940s.


title: Jojo Rabbit

text: Rubeo thought of Rosie's character as open: "She represents [...] life, [and] she doesn't want to hide [that]." Rubeo started by scouring vintage Italian houses for Rosie's wardrobe, though she also created several blouses and dresses by herself. She wanted Rosie's clothing to be distinctive so it would resonate with the audience throughout the film and assist them in the scene where Rosie is found hanged. Concerning that specific scene, Rubeo chose a pair of single lace-up red and white spectator shoes made by the Toronto shoemaker Jitterbug, based on a sketch she made. Imagining Rosie as "the friend of Elsa Schiaparelli", Rubeo flew to New York City, where she discussed the costume with actor Johansson. Rosie's short-sleeved sweater was characterized by "plaid and zigzag Missoni-style patterns". She was completed with high-waist baggy pants and several other accessories, offering her character a "chic" look. This is in stark contrast to Elsa's clothing palette which, being a confined character, was made monochromatic.