A decision of a U.S. court of appeals may be appealed to yet another appellate court, the Supreme Court of the United States.
An appeal to the Supreme Court is made by filing a petition for certiorari (a document requesting a review of court records). The Supreme Court has broad discretion in determining whether to review decisions. The Court receives thousands of petitions a year, but can only review about a hundred cases in that span of time. It most often denies certiorari and hears only cases that raise important and unsettled constitutional questions or in which the federal appellate courts have reached conflicting decisions on the same issue.
A case citation provides you with the necessary information to find a case in either print or electronic resources and generally follows this format:
volume number + source abbreviation + page number
Thus, 410 U.S. 113 appears in
volume 410 of the United States Reports starting on page 113
Often you will find parallel citations to the same case as reported in other official and unofficial court reporters.