The U.S. Supreme Court

    

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest federal court, operating most often as a court of appeals for lower court cases that bring forth constitutional questions. From this video, I learned that, in the early years of the country, the Supreme Court did not have the level of esteem and respect that it is awarded today. In fact, the Court's authority was not established until John Marshall became Chief Justice in 1801. Also, I learned that in its general operations, the Court receives thousands of petitions for a writ of certiorari each year, but only chooses about 100 of those to review. Furthermore, after they review a case and hear the oral argument, the decision of the Court can be written out from anywhere to a few pages from a unanimous decision to more than 80 pages when the Justices have conflicting opinions. 

     The most important point to understand about the Supreme Court is that the Court's authority hinges on their power of judicial review, which was established through the case of Marbury v. Madison. Through judicial review, the Court has the power to review all actions of government and declare them as constitutional or not. They do this through interpreting the words of the 200 year old Constitution and applying it to present day situations.

   

In fact, the most surprising thing I learned was that there are a  multitude of methods that Supreme Court Justices use to interpret the Constitution. With further research, I found that some of the ways the Justices interpret the Constitution are textualism, original meaning, judicial precedent, and pragmatism. Textualism interprets the document by focusing on the wording of the text as it would be understood at the time it was ratified; original meaning focuses on the meaning of the Constitution as it would be understood when it was written; judicial precedent involves using prior Supreme Court decisions to answer contitutional questions; and pragmatism considers the current societal context and the potential consequences of one Constitutional interpretation versus another.

    Finally, the video changed the way I thought of the Supreme Court by providing context on how the Court operates. The Court has specific methods of operation that result in decisions that are explained to the public in the form of the judicial opinions. As Justice Breyer said in the video, "there is no inside story [about how the Court works], it's people simply thinking [there is]."