11 dets. What Is the Purpose of the Supreme Court Justices
Supreme Court justices hear oral arguments and decide cases that have been granted certiorari. These are usually controversial cases brought before lower courts of appeal. The court receives between 7,000 and 8,000 applications per quarter and hears oral arguments in about 80 cases. The judicial branch of our government consists of the Supreme Court of the United States and the lower federal courts. The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the country and currently has 9 justices. Judges are elected by the president and confirmed by the Senate, like every federal judge. Their term does not expire, which means they keep their position for life. The U.S. Supreme Court hears cases that challenge the Constitution, interprets laws, protects civil liberties, deals with state-to-state disputes, and presides over treaty cases. One of the most important powers of the Supreme Court is judicial review. Judicial review allows the court to declare a statute or executive act unconstitutional. Supreme Court decisions have a significant impact on society.
Article III of the Constitution establishes the federal judiciary. Article III, section I, states: “The judicial authority of the United States shall be vested in a Supreme Court and such subsidiary courts as Congress may from time to time prohibit and establish.” Although the Constitution establishes the Supreme Court, it allows Congress to decide how it should be organized. Congress first exercised this power in the Judicial Act of 1789. This law created a Supreme Court with six judges. He also established the lower federal judicial system. Federal courts have exclusive authority to interpret the law, determine the constitutionality of the law, and apply it to individual cases. Courts, such as Congress, can compel the production of evidence and testimony by means of a subpoena. Lower courts are limited by Supreme Court decisions – once the Supreme Court has interpreted a law, lower courts must apply the Supreme Court`s interpretation to the facts of a particular case. Although the Supreme Court can hear an appeal on any point of law, provided it has jurisdiction, it does not generally hold a trial. Rather, the Court`s task is to interpret the meaning of a statute, to decide whether a statute is relevant to a particular situation, or to decide how a statute is to be applied. Lower courts are required to follow Supreme Court jurisprudence when making decisions.
In this case, the court had to decide whether an act of Congress or the Constitution was the supreme law of the land. The Judicial Act of 1789 gave the Supreme Court original jurisdiction to issue writs of mandamus (regulations that require government officials to act in accordance with the law). A lawsuit was filed under the Act, but the Supreme Court held that the Constitution did not allow the court to have original jurisdiction over the matter. Since Article VI of the Constitution establishes the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, the Court ruled that an act of Congress that violated the Constitution could not be upheld. In subsequent cases, the court also established its power to sweep away state laws deemed unconstitutional. How long do you argue before the Supreme Court? Typically, each party has 30 minutes of reasoning to convince judges that their interpretation of the law is correct. Almost all the cases judges hear are reviews of the decisions of other courts – there are no jurors or witnesses. Judges consider the records given to them, including the decisions of the lower courts for each stage of a case, the evidence and arguments presented to them in their final decision. In general, Congress determines the jurisdiction of federal courts.
However, in some cases, such as a dispute between two or more U.S. states, the Constitution grants the Supreme Court jurisdiction in the first instance, an authority that cannot be removed by Congress. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed it in the 1930s after the court struck down many of his “New Deal” policies. Recently faced with a court that includes six conservatives and three liberals, Democratic politicians have proposed adding several additional judges to reverse the balance of power. The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the land and the only part of the federal judiciary explicitly required by the Constitution. The constitution does not say how many judges the court must have, but the number has been set at nine since the mid-19th century and has since been codified by law. Theoretically, the president can appoint more judges and the Senate can confirm to steer the court in the desired direction.