Petitions for a writ of certiorari, prepared to the Court's own rules

No, and the Court's rules say so first. Supreme Court Rule 10 provides: "Review on a writ of certiorari is not a matter of right, but of judicial discretion. A petition for a writ of certiorari will be granted only for compelling reasons." The rule then lists considerations that, "although neither controlling nor fully measuring the Court's discretion, indicate the character of the reasons the Court considers":

• (a) a United States court of appeals has entered a decision in conflict with the decision of another United States court of appeals on the same important matter; has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with a decision by a state court of last resort; or has so far departed from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings, or sanctioned such a departure by a lower court, as to call for an exercise of the Court's supervisory power;
• (b) a state court of last resort has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with the decision of another state court of last resort or of a United States court of appeals;
• (c) a state court or a United States court of appeals has decided an important question of federal law that has not been, but should be, settled by the Court, or has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with relevant decisions of the Court.

Rule 10 closes with a sentence every petitioner has to take seriously: "A petition for a writ of certiorari is rarely granted when the asserted error consists of erroneous factual findings or the misapplication of a properly stated rule of law."

How the engine uses Supreme Court Rule 10

The engine treats Rule 10 as the petition's organizing test. During strategy, each candidate question is written up against the Rule 10 considerations it relies on. A claimed conflict must be shown with verified case citations from the courts said to be in conflict, each read in full, each recorded in the Citation Ledger with the quote that shows the conflict. A question that depends only on the facts of the case, or on applying a correctly stated rule, is marked against Rule 10's closing sentence, so the firm sees that risk plainly before anything is drafted.

Two statutes cover most petitions.

• From a federal court of appeals. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1254(1), cases in the courts of appeals may be reviewed "By writ of certiorari granted upon the petition of any party to any civil or criminal case, before or after rendition of judgment or decree."
• From a state court. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1257(a), "Final judgments or decrees rendered by the highest court of a State in which a decision could be had, may be reviewed by the Supreme Court by writ of certiorari" where the validity of a federal treaty or statute is drawn in question, where the validity of a state statute is questioned on federal grounds, or where a federal "title, right, privilege, or immunity is specially set up or claimed."

For a state-court judgment, the phrase "the highest court of a State in which a decision could be had" is itself a question the record must answer. The engine traces the case through every level of the state courts, including any denial of discretionary review, and records which court's judgment is the one to be reviewed before it computes a single date.

Supreme Court Rule 13.1 provides that a petition to review a judgment "entered by a state court of last resort or a United States court of appeals (including the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces) is timely when it is filed with the Clerk of this Court within 90 days after entry of the judgment." When the judgment is from a lower state court subject to discretionary review by the state court of last resort, the petition is timely when filed within 90 days after entry of the order denying discretionary review. For civil cases, 28 U.S.C. § 2101(c) sets the same 90-day period by statute.

Three more rules control the date:

• Out of time means not filed. Rule 13.2: "The Clerk will not file any petition for a writ of certiorari that is jurisdictionally out of time."
• The mandate does not start the clock. Rule 13.3: the time "runs from the date of entry of the judgment or order sought to be reviewed, and not from the issuance date of the mandate (or its equivalent under local practice)." But if a petition for rehearing is timely filed in the lower court by any party, or the lower court appropriately entertains an untimely petition for rehearing or considers rehearing on its own, the time for all parties runs from the date of the denial of rehearing or, if rehearing is granted, the subsequent entry of judgment.
• Extensions are limited and must be asked for early. Rule 13.5: "For good cause, a Justice may extend the time to file a petition for a writ of certiorari for a period not exceeding 60 days." The application "must be filed with the Clerk at least 10 days before the date the petition is due, except in extraordinary circumstances," and any extension applies only to the parties named in the application. Section 2101(c) likewise allows a Justice, for good cause shown, to extend the time in a civil case for a period not exceeding 60 days.

How the engine computes the cert deadline

The engine computes the 90-day date from the entry of the judgment, then checks the lower court's docket for any rehearing petition, any order entertaining rehearing, and the date that order was entered. By default, it computes the date twice, with a second model working independently, and resolves any mismatch by reading the rule text. Ambiguity goes to the earlier reading. If an extension may be needed, the engine computes the last day to file the application under Rule 13.5 as its own deadline, because that date comes 10 days before the petition's. Each date goes to the docket manager with the rule that produced it.

Illustrative example, fictional court and dates: the Court of Appeals for the Example Circuit (fictional) enters judgment, and a party files a timely petition for rehearing, which is later denied. The engine posts the original 90-day date as superseded under Rule 13.3, posts the new date running from the denial, and posts the Rule 13.5 application deadline as a separate entry.

Supreme Court Rule 14.1 sets the contents and the order. Several parts drive how the engine builds the petition:

• Questions presented. Rule 14.1(a) requires "The questions presented for review, expressed concisely in relation to the circumstances of the case, without unnecessary detail. The questions should be short and should not be argumentative or repetitive." They "shall be set out on the first page following the cover, and no other information may appear on that page." And the rule warns: "Only the questions set out in the petition, or fairly included therein, will be considered by the Court." The engine drafts each question against the Rule 10 consideration it relies on, and the hostile-panel read tests whether each question is short, neutral and complete.
• Parties. Under Rule 14.1(b)(i), as revised effective March 16, 2026, the petition lists "all parties to the proceeding in the court whose judgment is sought to be reviewed, along with their respective stock ticker symbols, if any." The engine builds the list from the lower court's docket and checks every name against the source.
• Where the federal question was raised. For review of a state-court judgment, Rule 14.1(g)(i) requires "specification of the stage in the proceedings, both in the court of first instance and in the appellate courts, when the federal questions sought to be reviewed were raised; the method or manner of raising them and the way in which they were passed on by those courts," with pertinent quotations and "specific reference to the places in the record where the matter appears," so as to show "that the federal question was timely and properly raised and that this Court has jurisdiction to review the judgment."

Rule 14.1(g)(i) turns preservation into a drafting requirement. The petition has to show, with record citations, where each federal question was raised and how each court ruled on it. More generally, the Court's traditional rule precludes review of a question that was neither pressed nor passed upon below (United States v. Williams, 504 U.S. 36, 41 (1992)). The engine meets that requirement in two ways. Where it has worked the matter from the start, its preservation map already shows where each claim was raised to stay alive in every court above, so the petition's statement is built from a record the engine kept as the case went up; see preservation below. Where it joins a matter late, it reads every page of the record below by vision, compiles the master record, and traces each question through each court, quoting the page where it appears.

A question the trace cannot find in the record is flagged before strategy, not discovered in a brief in opposition. The route through the lower courts is covered on the appeals below page, and the federal habeas route that can also end here is on the post-conviction paths page.

Illustration, fictional matter. State of Example Supreme Court (fictional).

Federal question	Raised (stage, method)	Passed upon	Record
Fourth Amendment seizure	Trial: motion to suppress; appeal: first issue	Trial: denied; State of Example Supreme Court (fictional): rejected on the merits	R. 44–46; App. 12a–19a
Sixth Amendment confrontation	Trial: objection to hearsay testimony; appeal: second issue	Trial: overruled; State of Example Court of Appeals (fictional): rejected; State of Example Supreme Court (fictional): rejected on the merits	R. 131–34; App. 20a–27a

Illustration, fictional matter.

Federal question

State of Example Supreme Court (fictional)

Fourth Amendment seizure

Raised (stage, method)

1. Trial: motion to suppress
2. appeal: first issue

Passed upon

1. Trial: denied
2. State of Example Supreme Court (fictional): rejected on the merits

Record R. 44–46; App. 12a–19a

Sixth Amendment confrontation

Raised (stage, method)

1. Trial: objection to hearsay testimony
2. appeal: second issue

Passed upon

1. Trial: overruled
2. State of Example Court of Appeals (fictional): rejected
3. State of Example Supreme Court (fictional): rejected on the merits

Record R. 131–34; App. 20a–27a

Supreme Court Rule 33.1(g) sets word limits for booklet-format documents, and for a petition for a writ of certiorari the limit is 9,000 words. The engine counts the text the way the rule's exclusions require, drafts to the limit from the start, and prepares the certificate that Rule 33.1(h) requires, stating that the document complies with the word limitations. The appendix includes the opinions, orders, findings and judgments below that the rules list (Sup. Ct. R. 14.1(i)). Cover, format and filing requirements come from the Court's own rules, fetched from the official text before strategy and re-checked before drafting and before the final read; see the Court's own rules.

The research ladder ranks the U.S. Supreme Court's controlling decisions first, then the courts said to be in conflict, labeling binding and persuasive authority for each. At this level, the question is often what the Court itself has said, and whether courts below agree. Every case citation is pulled from the primary source, read in full, and verified before it can appear in a filing; a case citation that is not in the verified ledger cannot reach the page. Research runs in both directions: if controlling authority against the petition's theory turns up, the line stops until a recorded pivot. The check for the most recent controlling statement is a live search, recorded as its own step. See highest authority first and every case citation verified.

By default, you approve twice, and the whole filing gets a final read before it ships; each approval, or the client's recorded standing instruction to proceed, is stamped in the record. The standing instruction never lifts a hold, and the candid analysis still runs. For a law firm, counsel of record supervises the work, signs the petition, and remains responsible for it. The engine is built to support those duties; it never discharges them.

How long is there to file a cert petition? Generally 90 days after entry of the judgment to be reviewed, or after the denial of a timely petition for rehearing in the court below (Sup. Ct. R. 13.1, 13.3). A Justice may extend the time by up to 60 days for good cause, on an application that must be filed at least 10 days before the petition is due, except in extraordinary circumstances (Sup. Ct. R. 13.5). This is general information, not legal advice.

What is "pressed or passed upon"? The Court's traditional rule that it will not review a question that was neither raised in, nor decided by, the court below (Williams, 504 U.S. at 41).

How long can a petition be? A booklet-format petition may not exceed 9,000 words (Sup. Ct. R. 33.1(g)).

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Related: Hard cases · Glossary: pressed or passed upon