I don’t think that this is a fair characterization of what it means for a circuit to have one of its decisions be heard by the Supreme Court. It makes it seem like being “reviewed” by the Supreme Court is a proxy for “out of the norm,” and that’s not the test for Supreme Court review. Many times a case will be heard out of a circuit where that circuit applies the same logic as the majority of other circuits, so the claim that there is a strong correlation between the circuit and adherence to the majority view seems extraordinary on its face.
Recall that the Supreme Court generally gets to decide what cases it hears and what it’s said about the cases it wants to hear is at https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/supct/rule_10. It basically boils down to cases where there is a conflict between any two chains of appeals (federal circuits and states). But the Supreme Court is lazy (or smart), so when there is a conflict they usually want to see how other judges think and to see if a majority vote will arise. The cases that get granted are therefore normally just from one of the last circuits to adopt a view (often one of the previously espoused views from the other circuits), and I would need to see the data to believe that there is a bias with respect to whether they adhere to the majority view (if it exists).
> I don’t think that this is a fair characterization of what it means for a circuit to have one of its decisions be heard by the Supreme Court. It makes it seem like being “reviewed” by the Supreme Court is a proxy for “out of the norm,” and that’s not the test for Supreme Court review
My intent was for the statement of their decisions being considered extreme and their decisions being reviewed often to be two separate statements, the former an opinion I've seen often and the latter a statistical phenomenon. The latter doesn't imply the former, but I don't think it would be surprising that the former correlates with the latter.
Recall that the Supreme Court generally gets to decide what cases it hears and what it’s said about the cases it wants to hear is at https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/supct/rule_10. It basically boils down to cases where there is a conflict between any two chains of appeals (federal circuits and states). But the Supreme Court is lazy (or smart), so when there is a conflict they usually want to see how other judges think and to see if a majority vote will arise. The cases that get granted are therefore normally just from one of the last circuits to adopt a view (often one of the previously espoused views from the other circuits), and I would need to see the data to believe that there is a bias with respect to whether they adhere to the majority view (if it exists).