Scholarly writings on “constitutional conventions” have, for the most part, focused on extra-judicial conventions — i.e., conventions of the executive and legislative branches of government. This academic reality begs the question of whether judicial conventions can qualify as constitutional conventions and, if so, whether they are worthy of constitutional study. This Comment seeks to answer these questions by analyzing a specific judicial convention: the U.S. Supreme Court’s adherence to the Rule of Four, an informal and unwritten rule that the Court will hear a case when at least four of the nine Justices vote to do so.

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