Blog Post #2 - The U.S. Supreme Court

 The Supreme Court is the highest level court in the Judicial branch of the US government. Within the Supreme Court there is one Chief Justice and eight other Justices for a total of nine. For a person to become a Supreme Court Justice, they must be well qualified, well experienced and well educated in law. The President of the United States is charged with nominating Justices when there are vacancies in the Supreme Court, and the nominees must be approved by the US Senate. Vacancies in the court can be caused by the death, resignation or impeachment of other Justices. Once a Supreme Court Justice is confirmed, they can sit on the court for life, or unless they retire or resign. I learned that one of the main roles of the Chief Justice is to preside over the Supreme Court and set the schedule for the weekly meetings with all of the justices. After watching the video and reading the article, I found it interesting and important that the Supreme Court is expected to make sure that the American people are promised equal justice under law.

The Supreme Court will take cases that have made their way up from the lower courts due to appeals. The Supreme Court does not hear all cases that are presented to them because there are too many cases requested than can be heard by the court’s limited resources. Typically the Supreme Court will take about 80 cases per year out of the thousands of cases that are requested. I found this to be interesting. 

The Supreme Court must decide cases to the highest standard of the Constitution. Once a decision is reached, members of the court write an opinion which is reviewed and revised by other court members until they agree that it can be made public. Once a case is made public, it becomes part of Constitutional law forever.