On the Supreme Court

 Blog Post #2

On the Supreme Court

The Most Powerful Judicial Body on Earth

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the most powerful judicial body on the Earth due to the power of Judicial Review. This power stems from the Government's understanding of the importance of Checks and Balances. Judicial Review provides SCOTUS the ability to ensure Constitutionality of actions taken by the Legislative and Executive branches of the United States government. 

Videos one and two cover the background of the Supreme Court. In these videos we not only hear about the background of the court, but we hear from Justices themselves on their experience. These videos give great insight into the court, its functions, and the Justices, even for those that may already have a decent understanding of the Court. 

Justice Ginsburg states "The first thing we do is shake hands" because if they have all made physical contact with one another, it increases the level of respect when there is a disagreement between Justices. This is an extremely important part of the operation of the Court as there are often disagreements among Justices that could carry high levels of tension. The cases being brought before the Supreme Court are ones of great value, when a case is decided it sets a precedent that sets a rule or doctrine for other similar cases to follow. These precedents are followed with adjustments only being made through incremental change (small changes in precedent) or through overturning the Supreme Court's original decision, which entirely changes the precedent. 

Many people believe the Supreme Court to be secretive, in fact when Justices are making a decision on a case, they are the only people present in the room, however, the Court is not truly secretive, they share everything. One of the Justices on the side of the majority opinion will write the opinion. In this process, the Justice writing the opinion will send it out to the other Justices of the Court, they give input on reasoning for the decision, as even when they agree on the decision of the case, many times they believe that to be the correct decision based on different Constitutional backings. Justices on the side of the minority opinion then will publish a decent to explain their take of the Constitutional backing that they believe supports the side the argued for. 

Overall, SCOTUS is often overlooked by the citizens of the United States (probably due to the fact that Justices are appointed rather than elected by the people), however, their power is extremely important. The Supreme Court carries with it the weight of maintaining Constitutionality among the entire United States Government and ensuring the freedoms guaranteed to the people of the United States are upheld.