Supreme Court Video

The Supreme Court of the United States is the most powerful judicial body on the earth. They do all of their work in private settings, "we are quiet" said a member of the court causing them to have a huge impact on the government. There have only been a little over 100 justices who serve on average 16 years at a time, a lot serve much longer.

 The confirmation process is so important because the public doesn't have an ability to influence the decision through the ballot box anymore. It takes the justices a long time to get used to being a part of the court as it requires a lot of time, dedication, and responsibility. 

It took awhile, but the public finally got used to the amount of power that the Supreme Court holds. John Marshall being named chief justice lead to the Supreme Court finally earning public respect. A lot of respect from the public was lost due to the Supreme Court saying that blacks could never be citizens but this was resolved  by the Civil War abolishing slavery. If this happened now, this would cause a lot of controversy.

 At the end of the day, all of the justices want the same thing: to be constitutional and support each other's morals and faith even if they disagree on the topic. The court receives about 7,000 new cases a year. Most of these cases are stating that a lower court ruling was incorrect or unfair but they only accept a few of them. They typically only accept about 100 a year. "Did the lower court apply the lay properly?" and "is the law constitutional?" are the main factors being considered when working on these cases. 

The justices meet weekly to discuss which cases will be accepted and which cases will be denied. The justices don't deal with just any issue they want to, they are issues that the pubic brings to their attention and feel the need to be resolved by the Supreme Court. Each side of the court has 30 minutes for a lawyer to propose their arguments which causes a lot of drama and tension. A few days after hearing the arguments, the justices gather to vote on the case and once they decide, one of the justices on the majority side has to write an opinion explaining the legal reasons as to what they decided on which is a very time consuming job.

The court relies mostly on the trust of the American People and gains a lot of power from us. The more trust the court has, the more power they have. The Supreme Court's main job is to ensure the American people justice and equality.