the Court solicits and genuinely considers the views of the SG before moving ahead with cert. It must be prior AND open to reversal to show reliance of their expertise---

When a petition for certiorari is on the discuss list at a weekly conference and therefore ready for the Justices' ultimate decision, the Justices have several voting options.32 Most obviously, they can vote to grant in full or deny in full certiorari.33 However, they have several options that fall between these two extremes. For instance, sometimes the Justices believe that more information is necessary before they can reach a full decision to grant or deny certiorari, and they will therefore CVSG.34 If several petitions for certiorari raise the same issue, the Court may accept all of them “to address that issue more fully than a single case would allow them to do.”35 The Court may also choose to narrow the granting of certiorari by choosing one issue raised in the petition or posing an issue sua sponte to the parties.36

After the Court has granted certiorari, either in full or in part, the Court then decides between giving the petition full consideration and giving it summary consideration.37 For petitions granted full consideration, the Court will hear oral arguments, receive briefing on the merits from the parties, and issue “a decision on the merits with a full opinion explaining the decision.”38 If, instead, the Court gives a petition summary consideration, the petition may take two routes.39 Usually, in summary consideration, the Court issues a “GVR,” which entails granting certiorari (G), vacating the lower court decision (V), and remanding the case to the lower court for reconsideration (R).40 In the remainder of summary consideration petitions, the Court issues a per curiam opinion—a short, unsigned opinion on the merits.41

When hearing and deciding cases on the merits, the Court operates by majority rule.42 However, when making certiorari decisions, the historical practice of the Court, called the “rule of four,”43 is to require four out of nine votes from the Justices.44 The Court has never been very forthcoming about why one petition is deemed worthy of certiorari and another not worthy. Instead, it advises that “certiorari will be granted only for compelling reasons.”45 Those compelling reasons, though “neither controlling nor fully measuring the Court's discretion,” are described in Rule 10 of the Rules of the Court.46 The criteria described in Rule 10 for evaluating a petition for certiorari are: (1) a conflict between two appellate courts, often called a circuit split; (2) a conflict between the court at issue and Supreme Court precedent; (3) importance of the issues in the petition; and (4) procedural posture of the case.47 Although these criteria for certiorari may seem somewhat imprecise and vague, it has long been certain that “[t]he Supreme Court is not, and never has been, primarily concerned with the correction of errors in lower court decisions.”48

C. The CVSG Process: Calling for the Views of the Solicitor General

“[T]he group of lawyers that has the greatest impact on the Court is the set of about two dozen who work for the Office of the Solicitor General in the Justice Department.”49 Indeed, when the Supreme Court calls for the views of the Solicitor General, the Solicitor General becomes “an important ally for the justices, who rely on the office's expertise to control their docket and help structure doctrinal development.”50 Essentially, the Supreme Court is requesting the Solicitor General's opinion on a petition for certiorari because the Justices believe that the petition is important and potentially worthy of certiorari but need more information, in the form of another legal opinion, before they can make a final decision.51 In the CVSG role, the Solicitor General puts aside any partisan advocacy concerns that the Office may otherwise have in order to “assist in the orderly development of the law and to insist that justice be done even where the immediate interests of the federal government may not appear to benefit.”52 The Solicitor General provides “a less partisan review of the law and a survey of existing precedent.”53 Traditionally, even where government interests would prefer otherwise, the Solicitor General does not hesitate to advise the Justices that the Court lacks jurisdiction over an issue raised in a petition or that the petition simply does not satisfy the Court's criteria for granting certiorari.54 There are a number of circumstances in which the Court will CVSG: where a federal interest is involved; where there is a new issue without established precedent; where there has been a change in the development of an issue; or where an evolving issue has become more complicated and attached to other issues.55 Former Solicitor General Kenneth Starr described the purposes of the CVSG process as follows: