Who Asked You? The (Dis)Use of Questions Presented at the U.S. Supreme Court.

This article examines how the United States Supreme Court responds to the "Questions Presented" (QPs) in petitions for writs of certiorari, focusing on whether the Court accepts, alters, or replaces the legal questions framed by litigants when it agrees to hear a case. Analyzing data from 2010 to 2020, the study finds that the Court is predominantly passive, accepting petitioners’ QPs without modification in about 76% of cases, though it alters or substitutes questions in roughly 24% of instances. The Court’s likelihood to modify QPs varies with ideological alignment between the Court and petitioner and the petitioner’s identity, with local governments, women and minorities, and interest groups less likely to have their questions accepted unchanged compared to business petitioners; the federal government’s framing success is comparable to businesses. The findings highlight the significant role litigants play in shaping the Court’s agenda and legal policymaking, while also revealing that the Court exercises selective agenda-setting power, especially in salient cases where it is more prone to substitute its own questions.