WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court has taken about 40 percent fewer cases so far this term than last.

The court now faces noticeable gaps in its calendar for late winter and early spring. A shortfall this month is the result of a pipeline empty of cases granted last term and carried over to this one.

The number of cases the court decided with signed opinions last term, 69, was the lowest since 1953 and fewer than half the number the court was deciding as recently as the mid-1980s.

And aside from the school integration and global warming cases the court heard last week, along with the terrorism-related cases of the past few years, relatively few of the cases the court is deciding nowadays speak to the core of the country's concerns.

The reasons for the decline are the result of forces that have been developing for decades. The federal government has been losing fewer cases in the lower courts and so has less reason to appeal. As Congress enacts fewer laws, the justices have fewer statutes to interpret. And justices who think they might end up on the losing side of an important case might vote not to take it. (Only four votes are necessary for a case to be accepted, but five are needed to resolve it.)

In a divided court, in a divided country, the court's reduced role is perhaps not surprising, nor is it necessarily a bad thing.

"In the post-Bush v. Gore era, the court may be concerned about taking the wrong case and making an unpopular decision," Frederick Schauer, a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, said in an interview. "I think they like being under the radar."

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