The Supreme Court

Prior to our lesson in class, I knew only the basics about the inner workings of the Supreme Court. However, after reading about the Supreme Court on the History Channel, I now know more about how Supreme Court Justices are appointed and some of the notable things previous Supreme Court Justices have been able to accomplish. I also learned more about the checks and balances system and how the Supreme Court can be limited by the other two branches of government. 

Supreme Court Justices are nominated by the President of the United States and either accepted or denied by the U.S. Senate. 

Some of the most notable Supreme Court Justices have been able to influence the power the Supreme Court has by doing things like establishing the power to review and rule law made by Congress by chief justice John Marshall and issuing landmark decisions that have completely changed the way people live today by chief justice Earl Warren. Some of these decisions include banning school segregation, the implication of "the right to remain silent," and the removal of laws against interracial marriages. 

I believe that the most important takeaway point about the Supreme Court is that it has the ability to check the actions of the other two branches of government. This is important because no branch of government should be too powerful, especially the Supreme Court as it already has a lot of prior power. 

If one branch of government were to get too powerful, it could lead to major consequences. Therefore, although the Supreme Court of the United States is the highest federal court in the country and the head of the judicial branch, it's important that the judicial, legislative, and executive branches remain in equal power with one another. 

The most surprising thing that I learned is that the chief justice is required to preside over the impeachment of the President of the United States. This surprises me because the chief justice is someone who is initially nominated by the president and I didn't expect that they would be allowed to be involved in that same president's impeachment. In my mind, I would expect this to lead to some kind of detrimental bias, however, after doing more research I've learned that this isn't actually the case. However, this information was still interesting and for sure unexpected to learn. 

Another surprising thing that I learned from the article on the History Channel is that for more than 100 years after the foundation of the SCOTUS, the justices were required to hold circuit court twice a year in each judicial circuit. At first, I didn't know what this meant, but with some further research, I was able to make more sense of it. 

The core concept of a circuit court is that the Supreme Court justices must travel to different locations to get a better understanding of the cases in those regions. The article also mentioned how tedious and grueling a task this could be due to traveling methods at that time, so naturally, I did more research into this as well.

The Supreme Court had its first meeting in 1790. During this time, the primary form of transportation was by horseback. This proved difficult for the traveling Supreme Court justices because of how far they had to go to attend circuit court. I found this very interesting and I definitely would not have known about this before.

Reading this article didn't necessarily change how I thought about the Supreme Court, however, it did help me gain more insight into the Supreme Court and how it works, and now I feel like I can better respect the processes of the Supreme Court.