On Monday, September 28th, the U.S. Supreme Court met in conference to decide which would be among the first of the 2015 Term’s cases selected for merits review and, on October 1st, the Court announced the first 13 cases so selected from a field of thousands of petitions for review.  However, with no comment or guidance as to how the Justices reached their decisions — not even which Justices voted for which cases — attorneys and the public are kept in the dark as to how the land’s highest court determines which issues will be placed on the Court’s docket.

Jeffrey Fisher, Professor of Law and Co-Director of Stanford’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, believes that the Justices should release to the public their vote tallies on petitions for review.  His op-ed piece appeared in The New York Times posted last week, and can be found here.