Supreme Court math

Supreme Court mathematics:

There are nine justices on the Supreme Court. It takes four votes for the court to agree to hear a case. But it takes five votes to stay an execution.

It is possible, then, for a death row inmate to persuade the court that his case is so important that it deserves a place on the court’s tiny docket of roughly 80 cases a year — but not so important that he should be allowed to stay alive in the meantime.

The point here, of course, is that the man's life is not the issue. He's just a man. Who cares? What's important is the higher calling to get the law interpreted correctly.