Inside the Supreme Court
Petition to Decision
Papers of Supreme Court Justices on Civil Rights Cases
David Achtenberg
Professor & Law Foundation Scholar
UMKC School of Law
Kansas City, MO 64110-2499
816-235-2382
Behind the Scenes at the Supreme Court
Welcome to the Petition to Decision Website. This website is a comprehensive digital archive of all the available papers of the Supreme Court Justices dealing with selected civil rights cases. Petition to Decision is intended to be useful to anyone interested in the internal workings of the United States Supreme Court. By tracing the behind the scenes progress of cases in the Court's chambers—from the filing of the petition until the day the decision is handed down—Petition to Decision provides a unique opportunity to see how the justices actually decide cases and write their opinions. The material will be particularly useful to those interested in civil rights litigation under 42 U.S.C. § 1983
Organization of Case Files
Decision Home Page: The case file on each decision begins with a "Decision Home Page" containing brief discussions of the decision's legal significance and background story. The Decision Home Page also contains links to the Archive, the Timeline, and Researcher Information.
The Archive: The Archive links you to the digital archive of all the available papers of Supreme Court Justices dealing with the particular case. The digital archive presents the papers just as you would find them in the archives where the originals are stored. Click here for an example of an Archive page.
The Timeline: Researchers who prefer to view the papers in chronological (rather than archival) order will ordinarily go to the Timeline. This page is a chronological timeline of the Court’s internal discussion and handling of the particular case from the petitioner's earliest filings through the Court's announcement of the decision. Each entry is linked to every document that relates to than event. Click here for an example of a Timeline page.
Researcher Information: The Researcher Information page contains miscellaneous information that may be helpful to researchers. For example, it contains transcriptions of significant but difficult-to-decipher handwritten notes, a bibliography of additional sources, a "Cast of Characters" listing the names of various people who played a part in the decision, and additional information about the sources of documents and how they were digitized. Click here for an example of a Researcher Information page.