Insight into the Supreme Court’s decisions on whether to hear cases

The Los Angeles Times has a story today on Justice Goodwin Liu, or, more particularly, on how his two recent lengthy dissents from orders denying review give some insight into what the court’s reasoning was. Usually, an order denying review is quite terse and gives no clue as to why the court reached its decision not to grant review. Justice Liu’s recent dissents, according to the article, shed some insight on the decision-making in those cases, but I’m afraid the article doesn’t do very well at explaining how. The passages it cites from the dissents demonstrate why Justice Liu was in favor of granting review by showing what he was thinking, but not why the justices who voted against review did so. The article has links to the dissents, so it is easy enough to follow up if you are curious.