D. CALENDARING OF CASES

• Jurisdiction: United States

D. CALENDARING OF CASES

The Court achieved significant control over its workload with the elimination of several major categories of appeals “as of right.” As will be elaborated upon later,¹² most of the Court’s appeals calendar is comprised of cases in which permission to appeal is granted. The advent of permissive appeals has enabled the Court to concentrate on cases that raise novel or difficult issues of statewide significance. The tighter control over the appeals that come before it has allowed for more expeditious calendaring of cases. It has also enabled the Court to coordinate, more effectively than at any earlier time, the calendaring of cases raising similar issues. Awareness of this latter point is especially important in civil and criminal cases in which the Court or one of its judges has granted leave to appeal. One of the elements in a leave-granting decision may be the recurrent nature of the issue presented, and it is not infrequent that several cases seeking leave at a given time will present a common issue. For the same reason, it is advisable for counsel to check advance notices of pending Court of Appeals cases, such as the weekly digest of new filings compiled by the clerk’s office, and to keep alert to bar association and like releases that identify issues in cases pending before the Court. Because of a common issue, some cases identified through that route may be calendared for argument on the same day.

Typically, when an appeal has been selected for normal course treatment,¹³ the Clerk of the Court issues a scheduling letter, setting out the dates for the...