The Supreme Court
Before reading the SCOTUS reading and watching the two videos about the Supreme Court I was not sure of what I had known and not known about the Supreme Court. Growing up in Washington D.C., I was highly educated on the Supreme Court so I was curious on what more I had to learn from the reading and the two videos. Most importantly, the Supreme Court is the highest federal court in the country and the head of the judicial branch. As said in the Constitution, the Supreme Court has ultimate jurisdiction over all of the laws within the United States and has the right to the final decision of the court. In 1789, the Supreme Court was established by Article Three of the Constitution which also granted Congress the power to create inferior federal courts.
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| Supreme Court (Washington DC) |
George Washington specified in the Judiciary Act of 1789 that the court would have six justices who would serve in the Supreme Court until they retired or deceased. The president has the power to nominate a Supreme Court justice during their 4 year term. Nowadays, the Supreme Court is made up of nine justices which has the power to check the two other branches of government; legislative and judicial. The justices of the Supreme Court had decided final decisions on major cases such as Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education and so many more. On August 3rd 1791, the supreme court justices handed out there first decision which was based on the West v. Barnes case; a case involving a financial dispute between a farmer and a family he owned debt too.
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I think the most interesting thing I learned about the Supreme Court is what happens in the decision-making. In Part II of the video, it states that a judiciary and the court have no secrets and the inside story of the court is that "there is no inside story". When the Supreme Court hears cases from the public, the lawyers on each side of the court of 30 minutes to make their arguments before the court. Justice Scalia said that being in the court is an exciting experience. It feels like there's only you and nine other people in the court room and you start to lose a sense of reality.
Like said before, whoever is standing before the court only has 30 minutes to state their argument. There can be 3-5 judges standing in the court depending on the case so that makes it more difficult to juggle all the information because they all want to announce their opinions and say what needs to be said.
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