Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. has decided to jump in the pool -- at least for now. That's the so-called cert pool, the group of justices whose law clerks divvy up incoming petitions for certiorari to produce a single memo about each case.
In one of his first major decisions about how he will operate as a justice, Roberts, when asked about the pool this week said through the Court public information office that he was joining it for at least his first year. That qualifier went unexplained, but it at least suggests the possibility that once Roberts gets settled in, he will take another look.
With eight justices -- all except John Paul Stevens -- participating, the pool has come in for criticism for giving individual clerks too much power to determine the fate of cases. Even Stevens does not read all the incoming petitions, which means that most are never seen by any justice.
Details here from Tony Mauro of Legal Times via Law.com.