Post 2 - History and Workings of the US Supreme Court

Opinion: Supreme Court's staggering deviation from precedent - CNN

For this blog post, I was asked to learn and discus the inner workings of the United State Supreme Court. Before learning about this in class and now as I watch videos and read articles, I can almost say for certain that I knew next to nothing about the Supreme Court. I am aware that it is part of the judicial branch of government, that there is a Chief Justice in the Supreme Court, and that they are selective about the cases they take, however, that was about the extent of my knowledge. I can safely say that I am quite a bit more knowledgeable now. 

First of all, what is the Supreme Court? The Supreme Court was created as one of the checks and balances of the government. In it's earliest stages, the Supreme Court was made up of 6 justices who served their lifetime and were generally obligated to take any case presented to them and hold circuit court twice a year. 

Liberal push to expand Supreme Court is all but dead among Hill Dems - POLITICO

This, however, is very different from how the supreme court works today. Today we have 9 fairly stationary Supreme Court justices that take on cases regarding the constitutionality of proposed laws  from the legislative and executive branches and vote on which cases to take and which to leave to lower powers.

The Supreme Court holds a ridiculous amount of influence over American social and political identity. It is largely through the ruling of cases at the Supreme Court that we build an understanding of what the Constitution means. Just to name a few examples, the Plessy Vs. Ferguson case of 1896  brought about the "separate but equal" pro segregation era in America because they deemed that it was not unconstitutional to separate black and white passengers. This "separate but equal" doctrine was then later deemed unconstitutional during the Brown Vs. Board of Education case which then allowed black students to attend what were previously white schools and vise versa. 

Considering the amount of power the Supreme Court has, I'm genuinely surprised how little I learned about it in school especially coming from a private school right outside of DC. I am very curious though as to why the justices of the Supreme Court get to stay there for a life time. I feel as though they should rotate out just like presidents or any other political position does. Considering how fast the times keep changing I think it would be more reasonable to have fresh eyes on the constitution every once in a while so that the way we understand the constitution will continue to progress as our country does.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Final Blog Post

Image
 I wish I lived in a world where our phones were just for talk and text and I mean that. At the end of the first video you asked us to watch, the narrator mentioned that the advancement of technology would be an amazing thing as long as it continues to benefit humanity and is for the benefit of humanity. I genuinely believe we are beyond the point where the advancement of some technologies can be any more beneficial as much as it continues down the path of harmfulness. I truely cannot fathom a pro that outweighs the con of increased suicide rates amongst children.  Accessabililty is an amazing thing, dont get me wrong, however I think the over-accessibility to everything is leading to a lack of curiosity, engagement, and creating an entitlement in people that has never been seen before. Im old enough to remember what it was like growing up without a phone in my hand or a tablet on my lap. We had a family computer that my brother and I would play our learning games on for an ho...
Read more

Post 10 - EOTO #2

Image
      My Group’s presentation was focused on policies that are very grey area on whether or not they are doing more good than bad or more bad than good. My specific policy that I researched was vertical integration. Vertical Integration happens when a company takes over multiple parts of the suply chain of a product. There is forward integration; When a company own a middle part of production and extends their reach forward or towards the finishing of the product, And there is backwards integration; when a company owns a middle part of production and extends their reach backwards in production in the direction of the raw goods.  It works sort of like this: Backward integration: Forward Integration:     While the above diagram is an oversimplification of how vertical integration works, you can see the general idea of it. Vertical integration is definitely a grey area policy. While it is not technically a monopoly and thus isnt prohibited by anti-trust regula...
Read more

Post 8 - Presentation Reflection

Image
  One of the modern technologies that really caught my attention during the presentations was Netflix. I was old enough to have spent a large part of my childhood in and out of blockbuster. I remember when me and my brother would run up and down the isles just looking at all the movies and waiting for our dad to find a movie for us to watch that night. I also remember when our blockbuster closed and watched it tun into an Aldi's and it broke my heart. However, as an adult, I appreciate the convenience that Netflix provides as a service I pay for once a month and get unlimited streaming of whatever they have to offer. I didn't previously know that Netflix started very much so like blockbuster as an individual movie mailing service however the innovation of creating a first of its kind platform where you can stream straight from the site is stellar. They started a new market of their own, one that has recently become extremely competitive with new streaming sites popping up like ...
Read more