The Supreme Court and the Sophisticated Use of DIGs

Almost all cases reach the U.S. Supreme Court’s merits docket through discretionary grants of writs of certiorari. On rare occasions, the Court will dismiss a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted, or DIG the case. The DIG process has received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature. This article fills that gap in several ways. First, it documents and analyses the 155 cases the Court DIGged in the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts (1954 through 2004 Terms). Second, the article examines how the Court’s decision to DIG a case relates to a number of legal and extralegal factors. Finally, it considers whether DIGs should be conceptualized as, or are sometimes examples of, sophisticated strategic behavior by the Justices.