Rule of four

The rule of four is a Supreme Court of the United States practice that permits four of the nine justices to grant a writ of certiorari. This is done specifically to prevent a majority of the Court from controlling the Court's docket.

The rule of four is not required by the Constitution, any law, or even the Supreme Court's own published rules. Rather, it is a custom that has been observed since the Court was given discretion over which appeals to hear by the Judiciary Act of 1891, Judiciary Act of 1925 and the Supreme Court Case Selections Act of 1988.

The "Rule of Four" has been explained by various Justices in judicial opinions throughout the years. For example, Justice Felix Frankfurter described the rule as follows: "The ‘rule of four’ is not a command of Congress. It is a working rule devised by the Court as a practical mode of determining that a case is deserving of review, the theory being that if four Justices find that a legal question of general importance is raised, that is ample proof that the question has such importance. This is a fair enough rule of thumb on the assumption that four Justices find such importance on an individualized screening of the cases sought to be reviewed."

The Rule of Four

The Rule of Four is a novel written by the American authors Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, and published in 2004. Caldwell, a Princeton University graduate, and Thomason, a Harvard College graduate, are childhood friends who wrote the book after their graduations.

The Rule of Four reached the top of the New York Times Bestseller list, where it remained for more than six months.

Plot summary

The book is set on the Princeton campus during Easter weekend in 1999. The story involves four Princeton seniors, both friends and roommates, getting ready for graduation: Tom, Paul, Charlie and Gil. Tom and Paul are trying to solve the mystery contained within an extremely rare, and mysterious book, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which was an incunabulum published in 1499 in Venice, Italy; it is a complex allegorical work written in a modified Italian language frequently interspersed with material from other languages as well as its anonymous author's own made-up words.

Tom, the narrator, is the son of a professor who had dedicated his life to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Throughout the novel, he struggles between being fascinated by the book and trying to pull away from the obsession that drew a rift between his father and his mother and is now causing discord between him and his girlfriend, Katie Marchand.