It is time for the Supreme Court to act...

[jmowreader]

Here's the deal: Every court in the United States is part of a chain of courts. For instance, in Idaho we have Small Claims Court, Magistrate's Court, District Court, the Court of Appeals and the State Supreme Court. Those courts feed into the federal district courts, which feed into the Supreme Court of the United States. A court has jurisdiction over every court under it...so, if the Idaho Court of Appeals makes a ruling, it is binding on all the courts below it but not on the state supreme court.

Would it be possible for the Supreme Court of the United States to announce that it has found no evidence of election fraud sufficient to nullify Biden's win over Trump, and order every court in the land to stop accepting election fraud cases concerning the Trump-Biden contest?

[Make7]

1. The Supreme Court is primarily an appellate court. It hears appeals on lower court rulings.

Cases work their way up to the Supreme Court – they do not start there (typically).

[Klaralven]

2. The Supreme Court does no investigation - it only receives evidence when cases are presented

[exboyfil]

5. They appoint a special master when they are

the Court of original jurisdiction (like the Texas AG tried to make them be in the stupid lawsuit).

This lawyer explains it pretty well. I am just parroting his words. He mentions water rights between states as being one example where it starts with the Supreme Court.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. There are only four kinds of cases over which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction.

They come up only every few years. Almost all other cases are accepted for discretionary review, and the court accepts only between 100 and 150 of the 7,000 petitions for certiorari it receives every year.

[exboyfil]

8. But the point is that they do original investigating

in those rare cases. It is just not appropriate in this case.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. That's because in only those cases they act as a trial court, not as investigators,

and they follow the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Federal Rules of Evidence (though they are not as strictly bound by them as a federal district court). But obviously they are not going to hear any state vs. state election case, so any such case will have to come up through the federal court system and be granted a hearing via a cert petition - which will not happen. Even if it did, the court would not hear evidence but would decide only legal issues.

[StarfishSaver]

13. The Supreme Court never investigates, even when it's exercising original jurisdiction

It hears evidence and rules based only on what's in the record.

[exboyfil]

14. They generate there own record with a Special Master

In original jurisdiction cases, they oversee investigation as well by assigning a special master. Here is one example.

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/supreme-court-s-2020-2021-preview-interstate-water-rights#:~:text=The%20Court%2Dassigned%20Special%20Master,issue%20on%2020%20May%202020.&text=Significantly%2C%20the%20Supreme%20Court%20has,qualify%20as%20an%20interstate%20resource.

The Court-assigned Special Master, which is essentially an interstate water brawl mediator, held an evidentiary hearing on this issue on 20 May 2020. The Special Master has not yet issued his report, but either way, the findings will be reviewed by the Supreme Court. Significantly, the Supreme Court has never decided whether groundwater can qualify as an interstate resource.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_master
The US Supreme Court will normally assign original jurisdiction disputes (cases such as disputes between states that are first heard at the Supreme Court level) to a special master to conduct what amounts to a trial: the taking of evidence and a ruling. The Supreme Court can then assess the master's ruling much as a normal appeals court would, rather than conduct the trial itself. That is necessary as trials in the US almost always involve live testimony, and it would be too unwieldy for nine justices to rule on evidentiary objections in real time.

[StarfishSaver]

16. Generating a record is not the same thing as conducting an investigation.

The Special Master essentially acts as a trial judge, i.e., rules on the admissibility of evidence, takes sworn testimony, etc. She or he then submits a Special Master Report to the Supreme Court, which reviews the report much as an appeals court reviews a trial court's decision and decides whether to accept the report or listen to further arguments related to the case. But the Special Master doesn't conduct an investigation - it only considers evidence submitted to it as in a trial.

[AmericanCanuck]

3. The supreme court (or any court) doesn't act by itself

It needs to have a case before it to make a ruling and the ruling is case-by-case.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. No, it can't do that.

There has to be a specific case before it that has made its way through the lower courts, and which the court has agreed to hear. State courts do not feed into the federal courts; they are an entirely different system, and the Supreme Court might hear cases decided by a state's highest court only when that state court has decided a constitutional issue (a rare occurrence). Also, even if the Supreme Court did accept an appeal of any of these election cases, it will not issue any decision to the effect that it has found no evidence of election fraud because it's an appellate court, and appellate courts don't rule on evidence. Their sole function is to decide whether a lower court made a mistake of law. There is no conceivable circumstance under which the Supreme Court could or would order all of the lower courts to stop hearing any of the election cases.

[JI7]

7. It doesn't work that way

[Deuxcents]

9. My question

Is..when do the courts say these lawsuits are not worthy of consideration and shut this down? Is it their responsibility to do that to protect the constitution and citizens?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

11. That's exactly what's been happening. These cases are being thrown out of court every time.

But there is no single court that has jurisdiction over all of them; they have to be evaluated one at a time by the court that has jurisdiction. In most cases that's a state court because each state has its own election laws. They end up in a federal court only because the Trumpers sometimes try to allege some violation of the Constitution or of federal law (the federal courts have limited jurisdiction - there has to be a substantial federal question). Trump always loses but because there is no court that can rule on their stupid cases all at once, it's a constant game of whack-a-mole.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

17. If we pull the blindfold from Lady Justice, she might use that sword to play whack-a-mole.

Just give me time to hide, first. She might come after me next for some forgotten transgression.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

18. "So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!"

Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”

More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”

― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

[Hermit-The-Prog]

20. There it is! Thank you. n/t

[StarfishSaver]

12. The Supreme Court can't do that

[brooklynite]

15. The Supreme Court has no such knowledge...

It only has the evidence presented to in the two Court cases its reviewed.

[Baclava]

19. Stop it, that's Trumplican thinking, there is no central power institution directing thoughtspeak