Has the number of cases heard by the Supreme Court increased or decreased recently?

The US Supreme Court received 8,159 petitions for Writ of Certiorari (requests for case review) in the 2009-2010 Term (the most recent year for which information is available), and increase of 5.4% over the 7,738 cases received for the 2008 Term.

The Court expected to receive 10,000 petitions for 2008-2009, but the number was revised downward in the Chief Justice's year-end report. This represented about a 6.1% decrease in the number of cases submitted for the 2007-2008 Term, but 234.5% more than the 2,313 the Court received in 1960.

The number of cases the US Supreme Court hears each year has decreased over the past sixty years. In 1950, the Court reviewed 93 cases; in 2009, the Court reviewed 87 cases. In the period between those years, the Justices occasionally heard as many as 150 cases in a year.