The Supreme Court
At the apex of our federal court system stands the United States Supreme Court. It stands as the ultimate authority in constitutional interpretation and its decision can be changed only by a constitutional amendment. Two documents are responsible for its creation which is the Constitution, which explicitly creates the Supreme Court, and the Judiciary Act of September 24, 1789. The Supreme Court is the only court named in the constitution laying out the Courts basic jurisdiction, identifying the mode of selection and tenure for justices. Under Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution provides that "[t]he judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Article III establishes the Court as the chief authority of the judicial branch making it equal to the executive and legislative branches (Lieberman, 2003, p 3).
The Judiciary Act of 1789 not only set up the federal court system and used the Court’s jurisdiction under the Constitution as a basis for granting it broad powers that are recognized everywhere. According to Abraham (1983), “There is no gainsaying the importance and the majesty of the most powerful of courts, not only in the United States, but the entire free world (p. 19).” The French political observer Alexis de Tocqueville noted the uniqueness of the Supreme Courts in the history of nations and jurisprudence. He stated, “The representative system of government has been adopted in several states of Europe, but I am unaware that any nation of the globe has hitherto organized judicial power in the same manner as the Americans. . . . A more imposing judicial power was never constituted by any people (qtd in Abraham, 1983, p. 27).
Issues as the number of justices, their qualifications and their duties have been settled by law and tradition rather than being specified in the Constitution (Baum, 1992, p. 13). The Courts composition was addressed in the Judiciary Act of 1789 under Section 1 stating “That the Supreme Court of the United States shall consist of a chief justice and five associate justices. . . “. The number of justices changed several times during the Courts first century. A number of changes were to the number of justices after the Judiciary Act of 1789 in part to accommodate the justices’ duties in...
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...embers are crucial in affecting the interpretations of the Constitution and important amendments relevant to citizens (Champion, 2003, p. 203).
References
Abraham, H. (1983). The Judiciary: The Supreme Court in the Governmental Process (6th ed).
Newton, MA: Allyn and Bacon Inc.
Baum, L. (1992). The Supreme Court. (4th ed). Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Champion, D. (2003). Administration of Criminal Justice: Structure, Function and Process. New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Lieberman, J. Supreme Court of the United States. Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia
2003. Retrieved 22 September from the World Wide Web: http://encarta.msn.com
Supreme Court Cases. Retrieved 17 September 2003 from the World Wide Web:
http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/index.html
The History of the Supreme Court. Retrieved 12 September 2003 from the World Wide Web:
http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supremecourt/supcthist.html
Van Dervort, T. (2000). American Law and the Legal System: Equal Justice under the Law. (2nd
ed). Albany, NY: West Legal Studies
Zalman, M. (2002). Criminal Procedure: Constitution and Society. (3rd ed). New Jersey: Prentice
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Abadinsky, Howard. Law and Justice: An Introduction to the American Legal System. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2008. Print.
Hall, Kermit L, eds. The Oxford guide to United States Supreme Court decisions New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
In Federalist no. 78 Hamilton explains the powers and duties of the judiciary department as developed in Article III of the Constitution. Article III of the Constitution is very vague on the structure of the federal courts. Hamilton had to convince Americans that the federal courts would not run amok. He presented that the federal courts would not have unlimited power but that they would play a vital role in the constitutional government. Hamilton limited judiciary power by defining it as a text-bound interpretative power. (R.B Bernstein) This essay was intended to endorse as well as interpret the Constitution.
In conclusion, "To strive for justice, one must be a person of principles. There is no single principle that one can use to achieve justice in the resolution of legal disputes." This is true because one must use a wide array of principles that come from moral and legal perspectives in order to gain a resolution. Unfortunately society has deemed it necessary to incorporate social stratification into some of these principles. The law tends to have more leniencies to those who have higher positions in society. With as many classes as our society today, it is impossible to find a jury of peers. Each person has their own idea of cultural norms, legal and moral principles, and a socio-class in which they belong to. Therefore, I contend that social stratification, whether it is between races, or economical levels, will always have some role in legal decisions.
Segall, Eric J. "Supreme Court Justices: The Case for Hanging It Up." Los Angeles Times.
Remy, Richard C., Gary E. Clayton, and John J. Patrick. "Supreme Court Cases." Civics Today. Columbus, Ohio: Glencoe, 2008. 796. Print.
"Landmark Cases of the U.S. Supreme Court." Background Summary & Questions (•••). N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.
Columbia Law Review, 104, 1-20. doi:10.2307/4099343. Reynolds, S. (2009). The 'Standard'. An interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Palmer, Elizabeth A. "The Court and Public Opinion." CQ Weekly 2 Dec. 2000. CQ Weekly. SAGE Publications. Web. 1 Mar. 2000. .
The significant impact Robert Dahl’s article, “Decision-Making in a Democracy: the Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker” created for our thought on the Supreme Court it that it thoroughly paved the way towards exemplifying the relationship between public opinion and the United States Supreme Court. Dahl significantly was able to provide linkages between the Supreme Court and the environment that surrounds it in order for others to better understand the fundamental aspects that link the two together and explore possible reasoning and potential outcomes of the Court.
In 1787 Article three of the constitution created the Supreme Court, but not until 1789 was it configured. The way it was originally set up was with one Chief Justice and five associate judges, with all six members being appointed for life. This court serves as the “supreme law of the land”, it has the power to determine if state or federal laws are in conflict with how the Court interprets the constitution.
The Supreme Court, which sees almost 150 petitions per week, called cert petitions, must carefully select the cases that they want to spend their time and effort on (Savage 981). If they didn’t select them carefully, the nine justices would quickly be overrun, so they have put in place a program to weed through the court cases to pick out the small number they will discuss. There are a few criteria that are used to judge whether or not a case will be tried. The first is whether or not the lower courts decided the case based on another one of the Supreme Court’s decisions for they will investigate these in order to withhold or draw back their conclusion that they made in their court case. Another is the case’s party alignment: sometimes the justices will pick cases that will align with their party beliefs, like trying to get a death row inmate off of his death sentence. They also make claims about the “life” of the case- the Supreme Court only hears “live” cases- they do not try to go back in time and re-mark a case that has long since been decided (Savage 981). Lastly, they like to take cases where the lower courts did not decide with one another -these cases can have t o do with interpretations of the law that have been left up to the lower courts and should be specifically defined by the Supreme Court (Savage 982).
AShmoop Editorial Team. "Constitution FAQ." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.
Judiciary as the Most Powerful Branch of Government In answering this question I will first paint a picture of the power that the court holds, and decide whether this is governmental power. Then I will outline the balances that the court must maintain in its decision making and therefore the checks on its actions as an institution that governs America. "Scarcely any political question arises that is not resolved sooner or later into a judicial question." (Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America) If we take Tocqueville on his word then the American Judiciary truly is in a powerful position.