The United States Supreme Court- My Thoughts
The Supreme Court-My Thoughts
After watching this video, I realized that I truly don’t know much about the United States Supreme Court. I think that the American education system places a lot of emphasis on learning about the Executive and Legislative branches, but not enough on the Judicial branch. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but I’m curious if other students my age feel the same way. I actually had to look up the Supreme Court Justices (I used this website- https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx) because I didn’t know most of them. It is disappointing, but nevertheless, we march on.
I also think that with the recent death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her successor (Amy Coney Barrett) being appointed to the Supreme Court, this branch of our government has been in the news more frequently than in other years. I also vaguely remember hearing about the death of Antonin Scalia.
From this video, I learned so many interesting things. More than 100 Justices have served on the Supreme Court (112, to be exact! https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/nominations/supreme-court#:~:text=The%20Supreme%20Court%20Of%20The%20United%20States,-The%20Supreme%20Court&text=In%20211%20years%2C%20there%20have,served%20on%20the%20Supreme%20Court.). This number seems incredibly small to me, as the Supreme Court has been around for over 200 years. Every two years we elect new members to the House of Representatives, every six years we elect new members to the Senate, and every four years we elect a new president.
Going off of elections, it’s extremely interesting to me that we, as U.S. citizens, do not have the chance to elect Supreme Court Justices. As I learned from the video, the president nominates a Justice and is then “tested” by the Senate Judiciary Committee. There are also no specific qualifications for a judge, which I find really odd. I believe that there should be some guidelines for judges, and those guidelines should be able to evolve over time as things change in our society.
I was also surprised to learn that there seems to be less regulation when it comes to the Supreme Court and the Constitution. For example, Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life, but the Constitution doesn’t explicitly state this. This article (https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/should-we-restructure-the-supreme-court/) presents some really interesting ideas about restructuring the Supreme Court. This article was written right after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, so it brings up some excellent points about adding more justices to the court, trying to avoid the political “scramble” of packing the court. I’m not sure if more justices would solve that exact problem, but it is a very interesting and intriguing take.
After watching this video, my impressions of the Supreme Court have definitely shifted. I think the biggest takeaway from this video is that I feel that U.S. citizens should have a larger role in determining the justices that serve our country and make the rules that we follow.
Sources:
https://www.history.com/topics/us-government/supreme-court-facts
https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx
https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/should-we-restructure-the-supreme-court/
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