Potter Stewart

“ Alike in Congress and here it has been repeatedly insisted that a question like that raised by petitioner-was there sufficient evidence for submission to a jury-is not proper for review in this Court. The circumstances in the type of situation before us are infinite in their variety. Judicial judgments upon such circumstances are bound to vary with the particularities of the individual situation. The decision in each case is a strictly particular adjudication-a unique case since it turns on unique facts-and cannot have precedential value. ”

“ Therefore, ever since Congress, in 1891, established the Courts of Appeals as the customary tribunal for final adjudication of the class of cases to which the present belongs, this Court has, as a rule, been resolute in guarding against abuse of its closely restricted discretionary certiorari jurisdiction. Due regard for our practice and for the vital jurisdictional principle which underlies it, compels the conclusion that this writ of certiorari should never have issued.
However, if we are to review facts, we must establish and adhere to a rational standard of review. ”

“ The process of screening those cases which alone justify adjudication by the Supreme Court is in itself a very demanding aspect of the Court's work. The litigious tendency of our people and the unwillingness of litigants to rest content with adverse decisions after their cause has been litigated in two and often in three courts, lead to attempts to get a final review by the Supreme Court in literally thousands of cases which should neverrea ch the highest Court of the land. ”

“ When a case goes beyond that, it is not primarily to preserve the rights of the litigants. The Supreme Court's function is for the purpose of expounding and stabilizing principles of law for the benefit of the people of the country, passing upon constitutional questions and other important questions of law for the public benefit. ”

“ Knight, 217 U.S. 257, 267-268, 30 S.Ct. 505, 509, 54 L.Ed. 757, the Court said: 'The great purpose of the act of 1891, however, to which all its provisions are subervient, is to distribute the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States, and thus to relieve the docket of this court by casting upon the circuit courts of appeal the duty of finally deciding the cases over which the jurisdiction of those courts is by the act made final. ”

“ Lawyers not unnaturally hope to draw a prize in the lottery and even conscientious lawyers who feel it their duty, as officers of the Court, to obey the paper requirements of a petition for certiorari, may feel obligated to their clients not to abstain where others have succeeded. No doubt the most rigorous adherence to the criteria for granting certiorari will not prevent too many hopeless petitions for certiorari from being filed. But laxity by the Court in respecting its own rules is bound to stimulate petitions for certiorari with which the Court should never be burdened. ”

“ Fabulous inflation cannot turn these conventional motions turning on appreciation of evidence into constitutional issues, nor can the many diversity cases sought to be brought here on contested questions of evidentiary weight be similarly transformed by insisting before this Court that the Constitution has been violated. ”

“ In re Woods, 143 U.S. 202, 12 S.Ct. 417, 36 L.Ed. 125; Lau Ow Bew v. United States, 144 U.S. 47, 12 S.Ct. 517, 36 L.Ed. 340; American Construction Co. v. Jacksonville, T. & K.W.R. Co., 148 U.S. 372, 13 S.Ct. ”