Essay about The Political Supreme Court

There are two major factors that affect the confirmation process of a president’s nominees; one is party affiliation. Party affiliation is very important when the Senate is confirming a nominee, because Senate confirms nominees by a ⅔ vote. This could be very crucial to the president and his or her nominee, because if the majority of the Senate is part of the opposing party, this becomes difficult for the president to get his nominee confirmed. The second political factor is qualification to become a judge or justice. The Senate does not want an unqualified judge who does not know what he or she is doing. It is important to the Senate to approve someone who has experience in the judicial field than someone who has no experience at all. The

There is an open seat in the supreme court. Since the death of justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016, President Barack Obama has attempted to appoint judge Merrick Garland to fill this vacancy. However, the currently Republican U.S. Senate has refused to act on the nomination. This is not the first time the Senate has disagreed with the president's choice of nominee. The Senate confirms just around eighty percent of the president's nominations. There is a strong rationale behind this two-tiered appointment system. Seats in the Supreme Court are extremely important positions to hold; the Supreme Court has the role of interpreting the text of the Constitution and using that interpretation

The United States judicial branch to the general American public can seem insulated from politics, because of their adversarial system, that does not allow judges to choose their cases. The judicial branch unlike, their two counterparts, the legislative and executive at large rely on the respect of the American people and the heads of the two other branches. In appointing members of the federal judiciary, Presidents appoint members who resemble their political ideologies and their likelihood of confirmation in the Senate, the Senate confirms these members based on their performance on the litmus test and Senatorial courtesy. Courts, specifically the Supreme Court, make decisions based on the Constitution, but the legislative branch has the

This allows the executive branch to determine the makeup of the judiciary branch, and through it exercise power over the legislative branch. Because the men and women appointed to the Supreme Court remain there for life, with no public elections to possibly remove them, a president can affect politics through his choice of appointees for decades after his time in office has ended (Romance, July 29). But this, too, is limited by the Congress as the president’s judicial appointments are subject to the consent of the Senate (Landy and Milkis, 289).

President Obama publicly disagreed with the decision but could not change it. The President decides on nominations who are then put under scrutiny while he receives the ‘advise and consent’ of the Senate judiciary committee. There is therefore a small democratic link however it is very weak. Once a Justice is appointed they cannot be removed and are independent of the other political bodies this can be evidenced by Eisenhower’s appointments, a Republican conservative who appointed 2 liberal justices, something he regretted so much so that when asked if there were any regrets after his time in office he replied “I have made two mistakes, and they are both sitting on the Supreme Court”. As stated before the judiciary is independent and once Supreme Justices are appointed they cannot be fired or dismissed this leaves a huge deficit of accountability, a key factor of democracy.

What is also interesting to note, is that the balance of power and who ultimately gets seated on the Supreme court is decided on Capitol Hill. Up until this point in the review, there has been very little discussed about how the legislature plays into the decision process of how the justices are seated (Robertson, 2004). However, as it is critical for a sitting president to have a Supreme Court sided towards the president’s political affiliation, it is equally as important to have a legislature that will also seek to have the nominee on the panel of justices. The author suggests, that this hope is quickly diminished when during the presidency, the legislature’s majority is the opposing party. The author does an excellent job in communicating this dynamic in reflecting on President Clinton’s attempt to have his justice nominees appointed during his time in office (Burke, 1993). The issues of getting nominees approved was also driven by a number of critical turnovers within the office of the presidency. This point underscores that lobbying is not limited to companies and organizations but to the power of the president to push justice nominations through the system (p.44). Finally, another aspect that was discussed that hindered the process was that President Clinton did not hold his ground and in each instance where he faced resistance, the president would remove the candidate presenting another with the hope that the new nominee would pass the nominee process

Since the creation of the judiciary there have been many modifications that have occurred. To start as it talks about in our textbook, justices began serving on the Supreme Court for a much longer term. Until recently, most justices were confirmed by the Senate, and from 1947 to 1985, almost all persons nominated to be a federal appeals court judge were approved. But of late, these nominations have had a less certain reception in the Senate. In 1986 President Ronald Reagan nominated Antonin Scalia for the Supreme Court, the Senate confirmed him by a vote of 98 to 0, but one year later, when he nominated Robert Bork the Senate rejected him. The different parties in the Senate try to block the vote based on the political party of the current President. In the textbook, it talks about how much harder the Senate is to confirm the nominees by a high yes

Supreme court decisions are largely based on the political standpoint of the justices that serve. As of right now, there are currently three liberal justices, two moderates, and four conservatives. Having an unequal balance of justices who belong to a political view results in decisions that are made from the biases of the justices. Conservative justices often agree with conservative plaintiffs and the same goes for liberals. Typically the two sides will strike down cases from opposing sides. Some even say the Supreme Court leans towards making liberal decisions. It is no surprise that justices tend to vote depending on the group in which the speaker belongs to. Liberal and conservative judges also support cases that relate to their own group’s interests. All of the bias leads to unfair

Essay: Politicization of the United States Supreme Court. Discuss with references to at least 3 cases.

In the event of an opening, or anticipated vacancy the process begins by selecting and vetting (i.e. background checks and financial disclosure) a candidate for the position. The President passes his nomination to the Senate for the Judiciary Committee

During the process for selecting justices the president can nominate whoever he wants to serve as a justice. His nomination then goes to the Senate

The Constitution of the United States of America says that all federal judges should be appointed to the bench and have lifetime tenure. This is so federal judges may maintain judicial independence and not judge a case for political reasons, but rather how the law applies to the case before them. However, many states still choose to elect their judges by popular vote and justify this because judges make decisions that affect constituents directly. These states maintain that constituents should have the right to choose who is best for them. An election by the people sounds like a fair and trustworthy method, but ultimately, large corporations pump millions into Super PACs to ensure their choice candidate is elected. Judicial elections are often exposed to attacks from special interest groups and Super PACs, thus sometimes making an uneven and corrupt playing field. The fates of fair and impartial courts are at stake, and they should not be for sale.

-Another second way of chooseing a judge could aslo be by people choosing their supreme court judges, just like a presidential, gobverner, or mayor election when there is a position a spot available we could say that the congress are going to choose 6 candiadates for that postion and of course the judge needs to have experience with state or federal level and also has to have a law degree so instead like the US president congress would choose the candidates once the 6 candidates are chosen they would have 3-4 months for their campaign from does 6 candidates their has to be 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans and they have to fight for their vote so now the people are going to choose their supreme court judges so now basiclay this means that each

Judicial elections, a process virtually unheard of in any other modern-day democracy, is the most popular method of selecting judges in the United States. The elections are either partisan, requiring the candidates to secure an endorsement by a political party; non-partisan, requiring no political endorsements for the candidates; or retention, requiring appointed judges to face reelection to retain their seats after some time on the bench. Judicial elections were established in the nineteenth century to balance public accountability and political independence of the judges. And, with the settlement of most large-scale controversies ranging from: gun control to desegregation inside courthouses, the process of selecting judges

The combination of the nomination and majority vote is working better than any other position-filling strategies. There is a high legitimacy when the President chooses who he suspects will fulfill the position to the greatest of their ability. This is brought to light by how our President Obama has spent a month seeking for his hopeful successor of former Justice John Paul Stevens, in this case Elena Kagan (Baker Zeleny). President Obama had interviewed other potential nominees, clearly spending substantial time acquainting himself with their qualifications, met or unmet, towards the prestige of the Supreme Court Justice. When the President allots that much time to find a viable successor in the Supreme Court it clarifies how crucial it is to fill the position with dignity. The commonplace lengthy process of searching for the next Justice and the majority vote required by the Senate is too much to ignore. Even if the President was careless enough to haphazardly select a Justice, the Senate consists of 100 members of various parties who could nullify the Presidents nominee by a majority vote against said person. The most prominent backup in the process of admitting a Justice is the multi-partied Senate, and as long as they are not corrupt there will be a lock against easy access to the position of the Supreme Court Justice. Another reason to stay parallel to the U.S. Constitution is the dilemma of public elections and how scarce they are in proportion to the