The United States the President is typically viewed as the most powerful person in government, and as the de facto face of the U.S. Government. As part of the executive branch much is put into his image because his office executes the law. However, there is a more influential group of men and women who receive less media coverage than the President. They are tasked with interpreting the Law when necessary, they are known as the Supreme Court of the United States.
According to Article 2 Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the President shall nominate and “with the advice and consent of the Senate...judges of the Supreme Court…”. This means that the President of the United States has the ability to nominate a person to the Supreme Court, but
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The authority of the Supreme Court negates valuable states rights, and assimilates them into their own office. What is worse is that these men and women serve indefinitely until death, barring bad behavior. The gene pool is never diversified so to speak. Just like a stagnate gene pool is prone to unwanted mutations, and abnormalities, so to is a Supreme Court that rarely experiences change.
Since the current method of appointing Supreme Court Justices is inefficient, and dangerous, the People should seek a better way. One of the key problems is a lack of diversity on a board of people whose purpose is to decide on matters affecting an entire country. Scalia made an excellent argument against the current panel in his dissent by pointing out this fault in the current system he
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These are people ruling on issues that influence the lives of 320 million Americans. Yet they are not a sample of this great nation. A better Supreme Court would contain more representative individuals. A better way could be as simple as dividing the country into five districts composed of ten states each. Each district appoints two Justices, by election. This brings the number of Justices from nine to ten. Furthermore, one of the two candidates would be a lawyer, such as they are now. The other would be a person from a middle class perspective, qualifications would be a four year degree, an age limit of no younger than 30 years old, and a natural born U.S.
The current Supreme Court is the most powerful branch of government, and one that may shape the course of democracy for generations to come. The current Supreme Court is made up of nine justices. The four oldest justices are 79, 76, 75, and 73 years of age; Five of the nine justices are Conservative Republicans; Three of the justices are women: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan; One of the justices is African-American: Clarence Thomas; and Sonia Sotomayor is the first Hispanic-American to serve on the Supreme Court. Eight of the justices come out of the appellate court system, and Elena Kagan was the solicitor general. The Court today is divided almost equally along partisan lines. On the corporate front, this is an extremist court, a court that has shifted extremely to the far right. In important cases decided 5-4, it is usually the Republican-chosen quintet that provides the victory. The Supreme Court is now a corporate court that by giving big business the advantage is shrinking access to justice for everyday citizens (Edwards, chapter 15 and Bill Moyer).
It takes time to reach the highest court in the country; currently the average Supreme Court justice age is nearly seventy years old. It is reasonable to think that biases may be hardened and unable to keep up with the popular opinion by this age. For example, take public approval of same-sex marriage, which in the six short years from 2009 to 2015 rose nearly twenty percent in the polls, bringing it to a 55% majority. How does a Supreme Court with a stagnant appointment system react to such a sudden sway in opinion? Apparently, surprisingly well. For whatever reason, the decisions of the Supreme Court seem to align with public opinion. For instance, in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, the supreme court reached a 5-4 majority in for same-sex marriage. Public opinion at the time was 55% in favor, and remarkably, the portion of justices in favor was within less than one percent of that value. Perhaps the Supreme Court acknowledges its role to interpret the Constitution through the eyes of the people, as Justice Kennedy describes. Or perhaps it is due to the powerful weight swing positions carry in the Supreme Court. Whatever the mechanism, the Supreme Court does a remarkable job of staying neck and neck with popular opinion.
The Supreme Court plays a critical role in defining the law of the land. Essentially, they are a set side political body that makes decisions based on moral correctness concerning the people. In the Dred Scott v. Sandford case however, we can overtly see that the Supreme Court’s ruling was immoral. This is concerning because Supreme Court justices do not face releelection. Likewise, their main purpose is to interpret the Constitution in a way that is representative of the people. The ruling of the Dred Scott v. Sandford case was unconstitutional because the justices acted based on their own personal beliefs rather than the reliance on the words of the Constitution, and popular opinion of the people.
Madison wrote that, as far as political powers and the branches of government were concerned, “ambition must be made to counteract ambition” (Principles and Practice of American Politics, Federalist 51, p. 72). Ambition certainly counteracts ambition within the Senate itself, as is demonstrated by polarization and compromise, but ambition also acts as a balancing force between the Congress and the Supreme Court. When the president nominates potential justices, it is the job of Congress to carry out hearings and approve (or disapprove) the candidate (The Logic of American Politics, p. 390). Congress also has the power to determine the number of justices on the Supreme Court, and it is their job to add spaces on the bench as they see fit (The Logic of American Politics, p. 371). One of the more important functions of the Supreme Court is judicial review, which gives the Supreme Court the power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional. Although this power is never explicitly stated in the Constitution, it is implied in Article III, and is mentioned in Federalist 78 (The Logic of American Politics, p. 361). Madison noted, “it is not possible to give each department an equal power of self defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates” (Principles and Practice of American Politics, Federalist 51, p. 73). The Judicial Branch was designated as the “weakest” branch from its beginning, and was created to concern itself with “neither force nor will, but merely judgment.” Judicial review serves as protection for the American people from the abuses of Congressional power (Principles and Practice of American Politics, Federalist 78, p. 416-417). Just as Congress and the Supreme Court balance each other through structure and representation, they each also balance the actions and decisions of the
The process of choose and approve a supreme court justice is a process clearly defined within the constitution. First, it starts with the president. The United States president, according to the constitution, must be the one to nominate possible choices to fill the seat. After that, the nomination must by confirmed by the Senate. All supreme court justices have life long terms, so there will never be a single president that must make all the appointments. If a president if put in a situation where he or she must put in nominate a justice, it can be a very lengthy process. The selection criteria can range anywhere from experience to political ideology.
The Supreme Court interprets law, and therefore must be separate in its capacity from those that create and enforce the law. It’s there for the decisions that are too hard for us to make and the things that may break the law but are truly moral. It helps achieve fairness by the rulebooks of the laws we have today. Article three of the United States constitution states “The 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.” When there is a question of why the division of power between the president and senate to nominate and confirm a Supreme Court justice created by our founding fathers, we need to look at what the process of confirming a Supreme Court justice is.
As far as Federal judges destroying the Constitution, they aren't the only ones who are doing so. Like the Bible (for example) many have often interpreted it's meaning to fall in line with their own agendas or beliefs. If these judges are so bad, the blame ultimately on voters. Too many voters have become "party drones" They vote bases on name recognition or party affiliation.
The United States supreme court is the head of the judicial branch of the American government and was created to balance out the powers of both the legislative and executive branches. Here in the U.S. the government is essentially owned and operated by a two party system that consistently votes against one another, even if the proposed idea is one that individual members of both parties could agree on. Given the way the system runs, it would make sense to maintain a supreme court made up of equal parts Republican and Democrat with a swing vote in the middle such that the balance of power may be preserved. Sadly; however, this not always the case. Supreme court Justices are picked by the President and voted on by the Senate. As dark as the thought may be, at least half of the supreme court Justices are on their death beds. It is almost a certainty that within the next four to eight years there will be a great deal of vacancies to fill in the Judicial branch. This will no doubt give the President and senate at that time an unfathomable amount of power. There is a plethora of negative, or positive depending on your point of view, consequences that will go along with this.
Article III:1 of the Constitution states that “the 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.” The US Supreme Court currently has eight justices serving. The current justices are (Chief Justice) John G. Roberts Jr., Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Samuel Anthony Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. For a justice to be chosen, the president nominates someone for a vacancy on the Court and the Senate votes to confirm the nomination. Due to the large affect that the supreme court has on our law, it is important to have this balance of power between the executive and legislative branches of government.
The US Supreme Court has a number of powers. These include the power to declare acts of Congress, the executive or state legislatures unconstitutional through the power of judicial review. The supreme court justices are also given the power to interpret the constitution when making decisions, again, through their power of judicial review. It is arguable that it is essential for the supreme court to have such powers in order to allow the American democracy to flourish. However, there is much evidence to suggest that the supreme court holds too much power for an unelected body, thus hindering democracy.
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest federal court of the United States. Article III of the U.S. Constitution authorized the Supreme Court. The U.S. also has a system of separated powers with three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. The Supreme Court is part of the judicial branch. Since the death of Supreme Court Justice Scalia, there has been a debate on who should appoint the next justice, the current president, President Obama or the next president. According to the Constitution if a position in the Supreme Court was to become vacant, the constitution states the president, “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint…Judges of the Supreme Court.” The confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice is a solemn responsibility that the President and the Senate share under the U.S. Constitution. Due to enumerated powers, President Obama should be able to nominate or appoint a supreme justice because it is his responsibility to do so.
The one thing about America is that what it is and means is all because of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has this influence over the people in the court system. A good example is like how John Marshall unified the court in all kinds of
One of the qualities that I value the most in a Supreme Court justice is that generally the judge has had previous experience in the legal field. Having prior knowledge and experience in the legal system is essential because to be able to make constitutional decisions on court cases one has to know the law and be able to know how to apply it to various court cases. The current eight justices in the Supreme Court have all attended prestige law schools and have been judges with the exception of Justice Kagan who was never a judge before becoming a Supreme Court
The Justice recently commented that, "We're not as diverse as some would like in many important characteristics, educational institutions, religion, places where we come from" (Liptak 2016). The Supreme Court Justices graduated from just three different Ivy League law schools, no one is a Protestants, and only but one comes from a coastal state, with the majority coming from New York & New Jersey (Liptak 2016). This was not always the case. Supreme Court Justices used to come from more varied professional backgrounds (Liptak 2016). Some were governors, lawmakers, cabinet members, law professors, practicing lawyers, and state court judges (Liptak 2016). As late early Seventies, former federal judges were in the minority. Now, less than a decade on the Federal bench is a negative. With the variety and complexity of modern cases, it would be difficult to deny the contributions diversity can have on society through the Supreme Court. The background, experiences and personal opinions that undeniably factor in deciding cases cannot all be taught in Harvard and