This paper will argue why Chief Justice Rehnquist’s quote on the ever expanding of authority of the Supreme Court of the United States is an accurate depiction of the social adoption of a third legislative branch.Through the power of judicial review the Court has been granted legistoral authority that was not explicitly delegated to the Court, and with this new authority the institutional practices of obtaining a seat will be examined. This questioning stems from the fact that a court of nine unelected citizens have similar legislative authority of those elected to seats of authority in the Executive and Legislative branch. Even so,
For one to understand the authoritative changes made in the adoption of a more legislative like Court, it
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Madison in 1803, the Court was granted the power of judicial review(Judicial Learning Center), which fundamentally reshaped the power it possessed. Through Judicial Review the Court now has the authority to consider the constitutionality of any legislation passed, as long as it has jurisdiction and meets the specific criteria of justiciability. To do so the court must not be offering an advisory opinion, the plaintiff must have standing, and the issues must be ripe but neither moot nor violative of the political question doctrine(Legal Information Institute). These limitations prevented most cases from making it all the way to the Supreme Court. However, as time has passed and the Court’s use of Judicial Review increases more cases make it to the court with correct justiciability, and proper jurisdiction. In 1950, 1195 cases made it to the court, in 1975, 3940 cases made it and now on average seven to a thousand cases make it all the way to the court in terms of proper jurisdiction, and present justiciability(Supreme Court of the United States). Nevertheless, with that said only about 80 cases are granted the ability to have oral arguments in the court. More importantly, this increase in cases having the proper criteria to make it to the Court speaks to a change in how people see the court. Citizens have adopted to the fact that the Court has legislative authority through judicial review, and now use the Court as a way to …show more content…
The power of Judicial Review has expanded to a point where Justices are able to strike down laws if they have the outside support, yet they do so in a way that would be quite different than a democratically elected court would. A court that was based upon democratic elections would no longer be acting in way to preserve the constitution, but rather to show dedication to a platform that large groups of voters are passionate about. With a shift to a completely democratically elected legislative court, the Supreme Court would soon become no more than building that facilitated show trials in order to secure electorates, which is even further from the original intent of this branch. With that said, it is necessary for the Court to have some legislative authority. As Hamilton said, the Judiciary branch has the power of judgement(Federalist 78, 1788) which is essential in preserving the constitution, and seeing that the Legislative and Executive branches do not overstep their authority: and this comes from the legislative power of judicial review. In addition, through the legislative power the court posses, Justices are able to find new civil liberties through the process substantive of dew process. Without this authority some of the most common liberties like privacy, and abortion would not be
By giving life tenure to appointed officials, the founding fathers protected them from political pressure. But, by taking away the accountability of these officials, the framers actually produced a perfect opportunity for krytocracy, a government ruled by judges. When a justice, or anyone for that matter, is secured with a job for life, there is not enough incentive motivating him to perform to the best of his ability. If the lifelong term was changed to say, 8 or 12 years, the justices would be more likely to keep the people’s interests in mind and to represent the public instead of being driven by their own selfish concerns. If the judges’ terms were limited, it would allow their actions to be reviewed, analyzed and determined right or wrong by the people. It would kee...
The court case of Marbury v. Madison (1803) is credited and widely believed to be the creator of the “unprecedented” concept of Judicial Review. John Marshall, the Supreme Court Justice at the time, is lionized as a pioneer of Constitutional justice, but, in the past, was never really recognized as so. What needs to be clarified is that nothing in history is truly unprecedented, and Marbury v. Madison’s modern glorification is merely a product of years of disagreements on the validity of judicial review, fueled by court cases like Eakin v. Raub; John Marshall was also never really recognized in the past as the creator of judicial review, as shown in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford.
From 1992 to 2005, the Supreme Court’s decisions mostly mirrored public opinion. After Rehnquist’s passing in 2005, the Supreme Court has swung more in the direction of the conservative party than in pervious years. The conservative agenda is becoming more prominent than it was under Rehnquist and before O’Connor retired. Besides swing the court to the consertive side, Rehnquist’s passing also ended the longest running group of Justices to serve together. They had...
Marbury v. Madison: The Legacy of Judicial Review John Marshall, Supreme Court Justice, created legal precedence in the historical case, Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Throughout history, he is portrayed as the fountainhead of judicial review. Marshall asserted the right of the judicial branch of government to void legislation it deemed unconstitutional, (Lemieux, 2003). In this essay, I will describe the factual circumstances and the Supreme Court holdings, explaining the reasoning behind Chief Justice Marshall’s conclusions in the case, Marbury v. Madison. Furthermore, I will evaluate whether the doctrine of judicial review is consistent with the Constitution and analyze the positive effects of the doctrine in American politics.
During and after the turmoil of the American Revolution, the people of America, both the rich and the poor, the powerful and the meek, strove to create a new system of government that would guide them during their unsure beginning. This first structure was called the Articles of Confederation, but it was ineffective, restricted, and weak. It was decided to create a new structure to guide the country. However, before a new constitution could be agreed upon, many aspects of life in America would have to be considered. The foremost apprehensions many Americans had concerning this new federal system included fear of the government limiting or endangering their inalienable rights, concern that the government’s power would be unbalanced, both within its branches and in comparison to the public, and trepidation that the voice of the people would not be heard within the government.
Gunther, G. (1991). Constitutional Law. Twelfth Edition. New York: The Foundation Press, Inc. pp. 1154-1161.
On the surface, it seems that determining how much power courts have would be a simple task. However, history has proven this to be false. The courts have been viewed in many different ways through out the history of our country. There are three common views of court power that are important for modern scholars of the court system. Those who believe courts have little power to cause social change are said to adhere to the Constrained Court view. Those who believe courts have a great deal of power to cause social change are said to adhere to the Dynamic Court view. The final, and youngest, take on court power combines aspects of the Constrained and Dynamic views into what I shall call the Condition Dependent Court view of power. This view sees that there are certain conditions which allow the court to cause social change.
People have always been concerned about our judicial system making massive decisions in an undemocratic manner and while there are parts of our nation’s history (Jost). There have been decisions that were dreadful for our nation, Dred Scott v. Sandford; but there are decisions that everyone can agree with in retrospect, Brown v. Board of Education. Also, there are decisions that still divide us as a nation, Bush v. Gore and Roe V. Wade. There are a lot of issues that come from our current judicial system; however, I understand that the problems that come from it are not going to come from any quick fix, and we may have to live with some of them. Looking at the history of the judicial branch of the United States Government, I believe it needs to be limited in its judicial review power, but have certain exceptions where necessary in some cases.
The Supreme Court, which sees almost 150 petitions per week, called cert petitions, must carefully select the cases that they want to spend their time and effort on (Savage 981). If they didn’t select them carefully, the nine justices would quickly be overrun, so they have put in place a program to weed through the court cases to pick out the small number they will discuss. There are a few criteria that are used to judge whether or not a case will be tried. The first is whether or not the lower courts decided the case based on another one of the Supreme Court’s decisions for they will investigate these in order to withhold or draw back their conclusion that they made in their court case. Another is the case’s party alignment: sometimes the justices will pick cases that will align with their party beliefs, like trying to get a death row inmate off of his death sentence. They also make claims about the “life” of the case- the Supreme Court only hears “live” cases- they do not try to go back in time and re-mark a case that has long since been decided (Savage 981). Lastly, they like to take cases where the lower courts did not decide with one another -these cases can have t o do with interpretations of the law that have been left up to the lower courts and should be specifically defined by the Supreme Court (Savage 982).
The life of every American citizen, whether they realize it or not, is influenced by one entity--the United States Supreme Court. This part of government ensures that the freedoms of the American people are protected by checking the laws that are passed by Congress and the actions taken by the President. While the judicial branch may have developed later than its counterparts, many of the powers the Supreme Court exercises required years of deliberation to perfect. In the early years of the Supreme Court, one man’s judgement influenced the powers of the court systems for years to come. John Marshall was the chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835, and as the only lasting Federalist influence in a newly Democratic-Republican government, he and his fellow justices sought to perpetuate their Federalist principles in the United States’ court system. In one of the most memorable court cases of all time--the case of Marbury v. Madison-- Marshall established the idea of judicial review and strengthened the power of the judicial branch in the government. Abiding by his Federalist ideals, Marshall decided cases that would explicitly limit the power of the state government and broaden the strengths of the national government. Lastly, the Marshall Court was infamous for determining the results of cases that dealt with the interpretation of the Constitution and the importance of contracts in American society. The Marshall Court, over the span of a mere three decades, managed to influence the life of every American citizen even to this day by impacting the development of the judicial branch, establishing a boundary between the state and national government, and making declarations on the sanctity of contracts ("The Marshall Court"...
In no other democracy does a court hold so much political power and in particular power over public policy decisions.
The United States of America is one of the most powerful nation-states in the world today. The framers of the American Constitution spent a great deal of time and effort into making sure this power wasn’t too centralized in one aspect of the government. They created three branches of government to help maintain a checks and balance system. In this paper I will discuss these three branches, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial, for both the state and federal level.
The debate over the legitimacy of the role of judicial review in the United States constitutional democracy has been around since the creation of the Constitution. The power of judicial review can be considered antidemocratic because it isn’t directly stated in the Constitution, of the authority of unelected judges and the fact that it sometimes resists the majority. Despite these claims, I believe judicial review is a constitutional doctrine, which arose from the historical process of persuasive reasoning in rulings, institutional prestige, the cooperation of political branches, and general public opinion.
The significant impact Robert Dahl’s article, “Decision-Making in a Democracy: the Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker” created for our thought on the Supreme Court it that it thoroughly paved the way towards exemplifying the relationship between public opinion and the United States Supreme Court. Dahl significantly was able to provide linkages between the Supreme Court and the environment that surrounds it in order for others to better understand the fundamental aspects that link the two together and explore possible reasoning and potential outcomes of the Court.
Robert N. Clinton, ‘Judges Must Make Law: A Realistic Appraisal of the Judicial Function in a Democratic Society’ [1981-1982] 67 Iowa L. Rev. 711 http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/ilr67&div=38&g_sent=1&collection=journals accessed 12 February 2012