What Does SCOTUS Stand For?

What does SCOTUS stand for, letter by letter?

The letters come from the main words of the full name:

Notice that "Court" gives two letters, CO, and "the" gives a T. That breaks the usual rule of taking only first letters, but it makes the result easy to say. The short form grew out of a set of older shorthand labels built the same way, explained below. Our guide what is an acronym shows why a spoken string of letters like this one qualifies.

Where you will see SCOTUS

• Headlines: "SCOTUS to hear case on school speech" saves space a full name would take.
• Legal blogs and notes: lawyers and students write SCOTUS in case summaries and outlines.
• Civics class: teachers use it on slides about the three branches of government.
• Social posts: people react to rulings with the hashtag or the bare letters.

Formal writing, such as court filings and textbooks, usually spells out "the Supreme Court" or "the Court" instead.

What the Court does

The Supreme Court is the head of the judicial branch, one of the three branches of the federal government. Article III of the Constitution created it, and Congress set up its first form in 1789. The number of seats is set by law rather than by the Constitution, and it has been nine since 1869.

Most cases reach the Court on appeal. A party asks the justices to review a lower court decision through a petition for a writ of certiorari, often shortened to "cert." The Court receives thousands of these requests and agrees to hear only a small share. Its term begins on the first Monday in October, and many major opinions come out by early summer.

The President picks each justice, the Senate votes to confirm, and justices serve during good behavior, which in practice means for life unless they retire or are removed. People across the political spectrum follow these choices closely, and opinions about the Court vary widely.

SCOTUS and its relatives

SCOTUS belongs to a family of shorthand built on the same pattern. These labels began as short codes used by government staff and the press:

• POTUS: President of the United States.
• FLOTUS: First Lady of the United States.
• VPOTUS: Vice President of the United States.
• SCOTUS: completes the set for the judicial branch.

Another name you will meet in Court stories is the DOJ, the Department of Justice, whose lawyers argue for the federal government before the justices. The government acronyms hub has many more federal short forms.

Saying SCOTUS out loud and in print

Say SCOTUS as one word: SKOH-tus. Print it in full capitals, periods left out. In a sentence, treat it like the Court's name: "SCOTUS ruled," not "the SCOTUS ruled," although both appear in print. Do not confuse it with "the Supreme Court" of a single state, which is a separate court with its own justices.

A few sentences to show the usage:

• "The case could end up at SCOTUS."
• "Our class watched a video on how SCOTUS picks cases."
• "SCOTUS hears oral arguments in the fall and winter."
• "She follows every SCOTUS opinion for her law review."