The commenter above doesn't understand how courts work.

When a court declines to hear an appeal, they are simply saying that the below court handled the case appropriately. By choosing not to hear it, they ARE ruling on it by maintaining the lower courts decision.

To say that SCOTUS "refuses" to hear cases on Terry cases, they are saying that the lower courts were correct.

It's not like they are dodging their responsibilities when declining to hear an appeal. That's how the system works - otherwise literally every losing party would appeal every single case to the supreme court.

You have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. Even if we're playing by the book, the Supreme Court can choose not to grant cert because they believe a compelling circuit split hasn't yet emerged, stare decisis, they don't believe the controversy is ripe, they think it's a matter for someone else like the legislature, they don't have space on the docket, etc. Not granting cert is absolutely not an endorsement of legal interpretation by a lower court.

Beyond that, idea that justices wouldn't, even subconsciously, use the power to choose their own docket to favor their own policy preferences is just naive.

> When a court declines to hear an appeal, they are simply saying that the below court handled the case appropriately.

No, they emphatically are not.

When a courts with discretionary appellate jurisdiction (in the US federal judiciary that's mostly the Supreme Court) declines an appeal, it is not the same as saying the court below is right, its saying “we have limited time and this case and the question it presents isn't important enough for us to spend time reviewing in detail, either procedurally or on the merits”.

There are fairly well-known factors that influence decisions to take cases by the Supreme Court (the issue having a thin record at the apellate level being a negative factor, a conflict between the circuits on a question being a positive one, among many others) that have nothing to do with whether the case is right or wrong, but have more to do with whether it raises issues that have been well vetted and for which there is some urgency (as arises from inconsistent application of the law) to resolve.

> To say that SCOTUS "refuses" to hear cases on Terry cases, they are saying that the lower courts were correct.

No, they aren't.

> It's not like they are dodging their responsibilities when declining to hear an appeal.

In general, no, because making those decisions on hearing cases is their responsibility. The particular decisions can be instances of non-, mis-, or mal-feasance in those duties, though.