Supreme Court For Dummies

Lisa Paddock

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118068656
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Gives you the scoop on how the Court reaches its decisions Get involved and track a case through the system This fun and easy guide demystifies the federal court system by describing what kinds of cases the justices hear, outlining how cases reach the Supreme Court, clarifying legal terms, and explaining how the Court arrives at its decisions. You'll discover how to get inside the Court yourself and investigate both the key issues and the players involved. The Dummies Way
* Explanations in plain English
* "Get in, get out" information
* Icons and other navigational aids
* Tear-out cheat sheet
* Top ten lists
* A dash of humor and fun

Part I

“We’ll Take It All the Way to the Supreme Court!”

In this part . . .

**IN a DROPCAP**

Everybody understands that the U.S. Supreme Court is not just the court of last resort, but the one place to go to get a final answer on what’s right. You can’t trust those elected politicians in Congress or the Oval Office to decide much of anything — even they go to the Supreme Court for answers. In these chapters, you discover the secret of the Court’s power: a little thing of its own devising called judicial review, which means the justices always get to have the last word. Remember who decided which candidate got to move into the White House after the 2000 presidential election?

Even if you’re not running for president, you’d probably like to know how a case gets into the Supreme Court. It’s a long and winding road, but you can find a detailed map inside. Like all good maps, it shows you forks in the road, dead ends, and that the surest route from A to B is not always a straight line. Enjoy the ride!

Chapter 1

Considering the Court of Last Resort

In This Chapter

Introducing the players

Explaining separation of powers

Outlining the judicial system

Understanding jurisdiction

A case study

In order to understand the significance of the Supreme Court and the way it functions, you need to know some basic facts about its makeup and its relationship to the other branches of the federal government, to the federal court system, and to state courts. Looking at how the Court decided the outcome of the 2000 presidential election helps explain how all these factors work together in the highest court in the land.

The Cast of Characters

The United States Supreme Court is both a building (see Figure 1-1) and a group of people. The Constitution does not specify how many people should make up this group. When the founding fathers organized the Court, they apparently did not consider that cases might end in a tie vote (in fact, they didn’t think too much about the Court at all), and in 1789, the First Congress initially set the number of justices at six: five associate justices and one chief justice.

As the nation expanded, so did the number of justices — most of the time. There was a brief interval in 1801 when the size of the Court actually shrank to five. Political considerations forced the number back up to six the next year. Political considerations were also responsible for nudging the number up to a hefty ten during the Civil War and back down to seven during the reconstruction period that followed. (As you see in Chapter 4, for example, politics is every bit as important to the Court as it is to the rest of government.) Since 1869, however, the number of justices has remained fixed at nine, one of whom is still the chief justice.

Until 1967, when civil rights pioneer and prominent lawyer Thurgood Marshall joined the Court, all of the faces in the Court were white. Women came later still: Sandra Day O’Connor, appointed in 1981, was the first. The second — and only other female justice — is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who took her place on the high bench in 1993. (See Chapter 4 for an explanation of how designated seats evolved on the Court.)

The Third Branch of Government

The judiciary is often called the third branch of government. Why, you might ask, if it’s so important, does the Court come in last in our tri-partite system? In part, this designation is the result of the federal court system having been outlined in Article III of the Constitution. (Article I concerns the legislature, and Article II addresses the executive branch.) But Article III is also remarkably short and makes the judicial branch seem almost like an afterthought. One of the chief architects of the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton, believed that that the Supreme Court, lacking both money and a militia, would be the weakest of the three branches.

How many justices make a Supreme Court?

The Judiciary Act of 1789, the legislation that created the federal court system, tied the number of justices to the number of federal circuits. Initially, these circuits numbered three, and as part of the justices’ job was to serve on the lower courts located in each of these circuits, the number of justices was set at six, two for each circuit. In 1801, the connection between the Supreme Court and the federal circuits was severed and the number of justices reduced to the sensibly odd number five. No sitting justice was fired, however, and no one retired before the Jeffersonian Republicans took control of the federal government and repealed the 1801 Judiciary Act. Six was the magic number until 1807, when the addition of another federal circuit necessitated the creation of another justiceship. In 1837, two more circuits and two more justices were added, and in 1863, the number grew to ten.

Ten justices proved to be too many (and once again, there was no tiebreaker). Besides, the Republicans who controlled Congress after the Civil War were at odds with President Andrew Johnson and his Reconstruction plans. So in 1866, Congress passed legislation slashing the Court to seven members, depriving Johnson of appointments and therefore, of justices he could count on. In 1869, yet another judiciary act fixed the number of circuits and the number of justices at nine, and there it has remained, despite some subsequent efforts to stack the deck.

Figure 1-1: The present-day U.S. Supreme Court.

© Adam Woolfit/CORBIS

Checks and balances

Alexander Hamilton predicted that the Supreme Court would be the weakest branch of the federal government. But Hamilton also knew that the government needed a police force to ensure that the two elected branches, the legislature and the executive, did not overstep their bounds in an effort to hang onto power. Someone had to make sure that the delicate dance being performed between the people’s representatives and their leader would not interfere with the smooth running of the country or — more importantly, perhaps — violate the Constitution. The party ultimately responsible for maintaining the government’s checks and balances , assuring that none of the branches abuses its authority, is the Supreme Court.

The three-part structure of federal government results in what is also confusingly called the separation of powers. The three branches are said to be both independent and interdependent. In reality, the separate branches are probably more blended than individual. Congress holds the quasi-judicial impeachment power that it can use to check both presidents and federal judges, for example. The glue that holds the parts together is the party system, which enables — and encourages — Republican presidents to work closely with Republican legislators and to nominate Republicans to sit on federal courts.

Once those Republicans take their seat on the high bench, however, presidents have no real control over them — as more than one chief executive has learned to his dismay. Federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, have what amounts to lifetime tenure and a guaranteed salary. Although justices can theoretically be removed from office by impeachment, none ever has been. The last time Congress attempted to pull this off was two centuries ago. The attempt failed, in the process proving the point that little short of criminal behavior could result in judicial removal. Political views — and especially personal judicial views — are plainly off limits to those who might wish to impeach a hostile jurist. Congress can overturn Supreme Court decisions only by means of the cumbersome process of constitutional amendment. Such efforts have succeeded exactly four times in the history of the republic. In each instance, it was the Supreme Court that determined the meaning and application of the amendment.

Judicial review

The federal judiciary is arguably the most independent of the three branches of federal government, the one least accountable to the others and the one that always has the last word. The reason for this unique status is judicial review, which is in essence the power to say what the law is. The federal bench, and the Supreme Court in particular, is the only branch of the federal government endowed with the ability to in...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : “We’ll Take It All the Way to the Supreme Court!”
• Chapter 1: Considering the Court of Last Resort
• Chapter 2: Getting to Cert
• Chapter 3: Making a Decision
• Part II : Judging the Justices
• Chapter 4: Make No Mistake, These Justices Are Politicians: The Confirmation Contest
• Chapter 5: First Among Equals: The Chief Justice
• Chapter 6: A Touch of Class: Some Notable Justices
• Chapter 7: Rogues Gallery: Some Notorious Justices
• Part III : Setting Precedents: Cases That Count
• Chapter 8: The First Amendment Is the First Amendment
• Chapter 9: Due Process: What Is It, and Who Gets It?
• Chapter 10: Equal Protection: How Equal Is It?
• Part IV : High Drama on the High Court
• Chapter 11: Dred Scott and the Civil War
• Chapter 12: Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement
• Part V : Understanding Supreme Court Decisions
• Chapter 13: Using the Internet: Your Best Bet
• Chapter 14: The Supreme Court Reporter Is Not a Magazine: Traditional Research
• Part VI : Becoming a Court Insider
• Chapter 15: Law Clerks: The Worker Bees
• Chapter 16: They Also Serve: Other Court Staff
• Part VII : The Part of Tens
• Chapter 17: The Court’s Ten Best Decisions
• Chapter 18: The Court’s Ten Worst Decisions
• Chapter 19: Ten Ways the Court Has Changed the Course of History
• Part VIII : Appendixes
• Appendix A: Common Legal Terms
• Appendix B: Constitution of the United States of America
• Appendix C: Justices of the Supreme Court