Supreme Court Decision Making

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The Supreme Court sits at the top of the federal court system. The Supreme Court is the “court of last resort” for cases coming from both the state and the federal courts. American government has very well organized the policies of supreme courts. The rules and regulations that govern Supreme Court are different and get influenced by various factors. Supreme Court decision making are influenced by a number of factors. The two main categories in which the different factors are divided are legal and political. Legal factors include the precedent of earlier cases and norms that justices must follow the language of the Constitution. Political influences include the justice’s preferences or ideologies, their stances on whether the Court should take …show more content…

It does not determine the outcome of any given case, because each and every case has a range of it that can serve to justify a justice’s decision. The justices’ desire to focus on the more controversial areas of unsettled law rather than hearing easy cases. In few areas such as free speech, the death penalty, etc. it is an important explanation for justice’s decision. Perspectives that belongs to language of constitution are followed under strict construction. Literalist view of the Constitution argues that justices need to look only to the real words of the Constitution. Also, though the language of the First Amendment is relatively clear when it comes to political speech, other equally important words of the Constitution such as “necessary and proper,” “executive power,” “equal protection,” and “due process” are open-ended and vague. Critics of the strict constructionist upholds a living Constitution point of view on the record. They contend that strict development can make a country the detainee of its past and dismiss any constitutional development. On the off chance that the judges are certain to take after the strict expressions of the Constitution, with the importance they had when the report was composed, we surely could be legitimately solidified in time. Changing the Constitution is a long and troublesome process, with the goal that alternative is not generally a reasonable path for the Constitution to reflect changing …show more content…

Liberal judges are strong defenders of individual civil liberties and they also support regulatory policy to protect environment. They also support national intervention in the states and favor race conscious policies. Conservative judges favor state regulations of private conducts. They also support prosecutors and the free market property rights ocver environment and state’s right over national intervention. They also provide a strong basis for the patterns of decisions in specific cases. The strategic model political factor deals with the justice’s calculation about the wishes and preferences of other justices, the congress, and president. The choices of other justices and institutional context are also taken into consideration. This is because the justices cannot operate alone. They need a minimum of four votes of their colleagues if they want to prevail their position. Hence, it makes sense to concentrate on the strategic interactions that take place to construct

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