The US Supreme Court is reactive, so cases only reach it when a losing party files a petition for certiorari. About 4,000 petitions arrive per term, and the court typically hears fewer than 80 cases, a chance of roughly 2 percent. Law clerks write memos recommending which petitions to grant, and at a private conference the justices need four votes, the rule of four, to accept a case. After written briefs and oral arguments of about an hour, the justices vote in conference, and the chief justice or most senior majority justice assigns the majority opinion. Opinions are then read and released, mostly through June.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.