U.S. Supreme Court

1. The highest federal court in the United States, consisting of nine justices and having jurisdiction over all other courts in the nation.
2. supreme court The highest court in most states within the United States. Also called high court.

Type: Government Agency
On the web: http://www.supremecourtus.gov

The Supreme Court of the United States is the top judicial tribunal in the nation. The court, which receives about 7,000 cases to evaluate per term, includes the Chief Justice of the US and eight associate justices. The president appoints Supreme Court members, which are approved by the Senate. The court reviews the cases filed by state and federal courts and decides which ones to hear. Established under the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Supreme Court began reviewing cases in 1790 in the Merchants Exchange Building in New York City, the former US capital.

Officers:
Chief Justice: John G. Roberts Jr.
Director Data Systems: Donna Clement
Public Information Officer: Kathleen L. Arberg

Highest appellate court or court of last resort in the federal court system and in most states. The constitutionality of a tax law and a small number of tax decisions by Courts of Appeal are reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court under its certiorari procedure.

For more information on Supreme Court of the United States, visit Britannica.com.

The Supreme Court is the final judicial authority in the U.S. system of government. Designated in Article III of the U.S. Constitution to have jurisdiction over all cases "arising under" the Constitution, the Court has the power to hear cases on appeal from the Federal appellate courts and the highest courts of each state. The Constitution also provides that the Court may act as a trial court in a limited number of cases: "Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." Though the Supreme Court is the final judicial authority in American government, it is not necessarily the final legal or political authority in the political system. While litigants may never appeal Supreme Court decisions to a superior court, disputes may proceed in other branches of government after a Supreme Court ruling. Congress and state legislatures may effectively alter or negate Supreme Court decisions involving statutory interpretation by amending or clarifying statutes, and may nullify constitutional decisions by amending the Constitution pursuant to Article V of the Constitution.

Several factors are important to understand the Court's role in American democracy, including: the continuing nature of the Court's relationship to Congress, the Executive Branch, and state governments; the influence of political and economic history on the Court; the intellectual underpinnings of Supreme Court decisions; and the internal dynamics of the Court as a distinct institution. Finally, the ambiguity of many key provisions of the Constitution is a source of both limits and power, for it creates the need for an authoritative voice on the Constitution's meaning and simultaneously makes such interpretations open to contestation. Created at the crossroads of law and politics, the Supreme Court's history is a history of controversy.

In addition to the possibility of legislative alteration of Supreme Court decisions, formal relationships the Constitution establishes between the Court and the other branches of the national government affects the Court's power. First, the President appoints each justice to the Court, subject to Senate confirmation. Second, Supreme Court justices, like all federal judges, serve for life, absent impeachment by the House of Representatives and removal by the Senate. Third, Congress controls the number of justices that serve on the Court at any given time. At various points in U.S. history, the Court has had as few as five justices and as many as ten. Since 1865, however, the number has held steady at nine, including one chief justice. Fourth, Congress controls the Court's operational budget, though actual compensation to the justices "shall not be diminished during [the Justices] Continuance in office." (Article III, Section 1). Fifth, the Constitution gives Congress power over much of the Court's appellate jurisdiction. These and other overlapping Constitutional functions of each branch of government have led scholars to proclaim that the three branches of government are "separate institutions, sharing powers."

Beyond constitutional overlap, the special institutional nature of the Supreme Court is important. For example, the Court lacks the power to decide cases unless the proper parties to a lawsuit bring the case to the Court. The Court also lacks the ability to implement its decisions of its own accord, having to rely upon the executive branch to carry out its will. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78, the Framers firmly expected that the Supreme Court, "no influence over either the sword or the purse," and would thus be "the least dangerous" branch of the three branches of government.

Marshall and the Establishment of Judicial Power

Though constrained, the Supreme Court has grown in stature and power since the time of the founding. This growth would have been nearly impossible without the deft political thinking and imaginative judicial mind of John Marshall, who served as Chief Justice from 1801–1835. The Constitution is unclear about the Court's power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional and therefore void. Marshall resolved the matter in 1803, ruling in Marbiru v. Madison that the Court did indeed possess this power. The historical circumstances and reasoning of the case dramatically illustrate the complex nature of judicial power discussed above.

Marbury arose during the tense transfer of power from the Federalist administration of John Adams to the Democratic-Republican administration of Thomas Jefferson in the wake of the 1800 election. Just before leaving office, Adams appointed William Marbury as a justice of the peace in Washington, D.C.—one of several new judgeships created by the departing Federalist Congress trying to maintain a Federalist presence in government. After assuming office, however, Jefferson and his Secretary of State, James Madison, refused to deliver Marbury's commission to him. Seeking the judgeship, Marbury took his claim directly to the Supreme Court. Marshall confronted a conundrum: if he and the Court ordered Jefferson to give Marbury his commission, Jefferson would surely refuse to obey, making the still fledgling Court appear weak in the face of executive power. Worse, Congress could have impeached Marshall. If the Court declined to support Marbury, however, it would appear to be afraid of Jefferson. Writing for the Court, Marshall dodged having to order Jefferson to deliver the commission by holding that the Constitution did not give the Court the power to hear such cases except on appeal from a lower court. However, he went on to hold that the Judiciary Act of 1789 was unconstitutional because it gave the Court the power to hear the case in original jurisdiction. Thus, Marshall avoided a potentially crippling conflict with the President while simultaneously establishing a broad power that the Court could use in the future. It would be nearly fifty years before the Court declared another act of Congress unconstitutional in the infamous Dred Scott decision.

The issue of states' power in relation to the national government was the most important issue the Court confronted before the Civil War. The Marshall Court was instrumental in increasing the power of the national government over the states. In two controversial decisions, Fletcher v. Peck (1810) and Martin v. Hunter'S Lessee (1816), the Court declared that the Constitution gave it the power to review the constitutionality of decisions of state supreme courts and the acts of state legislatures, respectively. And in MCculloch v. Maryland (1819) and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), the Court interpreted the "necessary and proper" and commerce clauses of Article I to give Congress broad regulatory power over the economy. The Marshall Court was also committed to protecting vested economic interests through the contracts clause of Article I (see Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 1819). Under the leadership of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (1836–1864), the Court was somewhat more deferential to the states, giving them more room to regulate commerce on their own and to impair the obligations of contracts for public policy reasons. (Cooley v. Board of Wardens, 1851; Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, 1837).

As race and sectional divide came to the fore by mid-century, the Taney Court found itself at the center of the gathering storm. In 1857, the Court made an infamous decision that made Civil War inevitable. Dred Scott v. Sandford held that African Americans did not constitute "citizens" and that the first of Henry Clay's three Great Compromises—the Missouri Compromise—was unconstitutional. The Civil War also tested the power of the president of the United States to effectively manage the country. In the Prize Cases (1863) and Ex Parte Milligan (1866), respectively, the Court found that the president could unilaterally establish a shipping blockade and seize property from "non-enemies" during a time of insurrection, but that the president could not impose martial law upon the citizens and suspend the writ of habeas corpus.

The Era of Economic Rights and Limited Government

The North's victory in the Civil War had two major consequences: the end of slavery and the unleashing of corporate development in the United States—pitting the regulatory power of governments against the interests of business and the private sector. With some exceptions, the Court showed more concern for the rights of business than with the plight of African Americans. The Reconstruction Era following the Civil War allowed the Court to interpret the recently ratified Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. In 1875, Congress passed a Civil Rights Act providing for full access to public accommodations, regardless of race. The Supreme Court, however, found that such legislation exceeded Congress' power, which only extended to "the subject of slavery and its incidences" (Civil Rights Cases, 1883). Beyond striking down legislation passed to integrate American society on the basis of race, the Court in this period also upheld legislation designed to segregate American society on the basis of race. In 1896, the Court denied a Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection challenge to the State of Louisiana's statute mandating racial segregation on trains (Plessy v. Ferguson). Some modern-day commentators point to these Reconstruction Era Court decisions regarding race as the nadir of the intellectual rigor of the Court.

Lochner v. New York epitomizes another controversial area for constitutional scholars. In 1905, the Court invalidated a New York law that regulated the maximum hours for bakers, finding that the law violated the "right to contract." Critics have pointed out that there is no textual right to contract listed in the Constitution. The Court subsequently overturned Lochner, but the case poses a perennial constitutional problem: how can the Ninth Amendment and the idea of non-enumerated rights find legitimacy with an unelected judiciary? More simply, what nontextual rights are in the Constitution and how does anyone—including the Court—know what they are?

The Supreme Court has employed two different tacks in discovering non-enumerated rights in the Constitution. During the so-called "Lochner era," it used the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), for example, the Court found respectively that state laws limiting the ability to teach children foreign languages and restricting the teaching of children in private schools violated due process guarantees, which encompass freedom "from bodily restraint, … to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, [and] to worship [a deity] according to the dictates of [one's] own conscience." All of these aspects of liberty are "essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men" and as such are protected by the Constitution under a doctrine called substantive due process.

Whereas the Court used substantive due process to limit the reach of state regulatory power, it used a restrictive interpretation of the commerce clause to limit the regulatory power of Congress in the decades before the New Deal. These cases illuminate the interactive nature of the relationship between the branches of government discussed above. The Court ruled in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918) and A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935) that Congress lacked the power to pass legislation regulating child labor, and to delegate the regulation of agriculture, coal mining, and textiles to the executive branch. Because the power of Congress was critical to the success of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal programs, F.D.R. responded to these and other decisions with a radical proposal. The president proposed expanding the number of justices on the Court to fifteen in the hope of garnering a majority that would permit Congress to pass New Deal legislation. Though Congress did not enact the plan, two justices on the Court abruptly changed their views on the commerce clause in a series of momentous decisions, including National Labor Relations Board v. Jones& Laughlin Stell (1937, which permitted Congress to regulate private employment practices) and Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, (1937, which held that Congress may sometimes exact taxes that have the effect of regulations). These famous changes in voting patterns came to be known as the "Switch in Time that Saved Nine."

The Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Era

After the New Deal crisis was resolved and the nation emerged victorious from World War II, the Court embarked on an extraordinary expansion of civil liberties and civil rights, especially under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953–1968). No case was more important in this regard than Brown v. Board of Education (1954), in which the Court overruled Plessy and declared that racial segregation in public schools violates the Equal Protection clause. Though it took several years before federal courts and the executive branch began enforcing the principles of Brown in a meaningful way, the decision was the springboard for later decisions that extended equal protection rights to women, gays and lesbians, aliens, children born out of wedlock, and other minorities. In the later 1960s and 1970s, the Court authorized massive integration plans for school districts; these decisions were controversial because they embroiled the federal courts in overseeing complicated institutions, a job that critics claimed lay beyond courts' capacity.

Controversy also arose with the emergence of the second form of substantive due process, as discussed above. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Court struck down a law criminalizing the use of contraceptive devices on the basis of a "right to privacy" in the Constitution, which it discovered not in the due process clause, but rather in the emanations of the penumbras of the text of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments. When it proceeded to render the controversial decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), that the right to privacy protects a woman's right to have an abortion, the Court placed the right to privacy back into the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. Recently, however, the Court has revived the "textual" discovery of rights in Saenz v. Roe (1999). The Court in Saenz found that one component of the non-enumerated right to travel is derived from the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Warren Court also accelerated the application of the Bill of Rights to the states. Originally, the Bill of Rights was intended to protect individuals only from the actions of the federal government (Barron v. Baltimore, 1833). Nevertheless, in 1925 the Court ruled that because freedom of speech is a fundamental liberty protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, it is enforceable against state and local governments as well (Gitlow v. New York). By the 1960s, the Court had "incorporated" other clauses of the First Amendment to apply to the states. The incorporation of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments coincided with the Warren Court's so-called "criminal rights revolution," which generated great controversy in the context of the increasing crime rates and cultural upheavals of the sixties. Though appointed by the Republican President Eisenhower, Warren presided over what has been characterized as the most liberal period during the Court's history. The Court's rulings in Mapp v. Ohio (1961, holding that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment must be excluded from trial), Gideon v. Wainwright (1963, applying the Sixth Amendment's right to retain counsel for the indigent extends against the states) and Miranda v. Arizona (1966, requiring police to warn suspects of their rights in custodial interrogations) greatly expanded the rights of the criminally accused.

With Justice William Brennan leading the way, the Warren Court also dramatically liberalized the First Amendment law of free speech and press. Before the late 1950s, speech could generally be punished if it had a "tendency" to cause violence or social harm. Building on the famous dissenting free speech decisions of Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis earlier in the century, the Warren Court provided substantially more freedom for such controversial expression as pornography, vibrant (even vicious) criticism of public officials, hate speech, and offensive speech. Concisely, modern speech doctrine protects expression unless it constitutes hardcore pornography ("obscenity"), libel, threats, or speech that is likely to trigger imminent violence. (See, for example, New York Times v. Sullivan, 1964; Brandenburg v. Ohio, 1969.)

Recent Trends: Consolidation, and the New Substantive Due Process and Federalism

After Warren left the Court, President Nixon—who had campaigned against the liberalism of the Warren era—nominated the more conservative Warren Burger in the hope of ending the reign of judicial liberalism. But under Chief Justices Burger (1969–1986) and William Rehnquist (1986 to the present), the Court has generally consolidated the liberties of the Warren Era rather than radically reversing course. Though the Court has cut back some Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, limited the reach of affirmative action (Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 1995) and limited the scope of desegregation of the schools and the equal protection clause (see, for example, Freeman v. Pitts, 1992; Washington v. Davis, 1976), it has also maintained the fundamental right to an abortion (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey 1992), expanded the protection of free speech (R.A.V. v. St. Paul, 1992), and reaffirmed the Miranda decision (Dickerson v. United States, 2000).

The Burger Court retreated from its effort to reinforce the states' rights provisions of the Tenth Amendment, but the Rehnquist Court has revived the doctrine of federalism under the aegis of the commerce clause. From the time of the New Deal until near the end of the twentieth century, the Court had regularly accorded an ever-increasing amount of power to Congress. The Supreme Court has upheld Congressional power under the Commerce Clause to regulate such things as wheat production for home usage and public accommodations on the basis of race. (Wickard v. Filburn, 1942; Heart of Atlanta Motel, 1964). Since 1995, however, a seismic shift has occurred in the Court's jurisprudence regarding Congressional power. The Court began what is called "the new federalism" by curtailing Congress' power to prohibit the possession of weapons near schools. (United States v. Lopez, 1995). In Printz v. United States (1997), it ruled that Congress may not force state executive officers to enforce federal gun control legislation. In United States v. Morrison (2000), the Court struck down a federal law that provided civil remedies for victims of gender motivated attacks. And in Board of Trustees v. Garrett (2001), the Court concluded that Congress did not have the authority to hold states liable for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

This change in the Supreme Court jurisprudence was not entirely unforeseeable. With seven of the Justices on the Court being appointed by Republican presidents, the more curious issue is why the group of the five most conservative justices waited so long to construct the new federalism. The five justices that formed the majority in each of the cases mentioned above (Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, and Sandra Day O'Connor) had all served together since 1991, yet the lodestar of the Court's more conservative decisions and the number of times in which the conservative block voted together did not begin in earnest until 1995.

These same five justices also became crucial in Bush v. Gore (2000), the case that resolved the 2000 presidential election and is already one of the most controversial cases in the Court's history. The Court issued a stay, 5–4, mandating that the State of Florida stop counting Presidential ballots on December 9, 2000. The five justices, along with Justices Souter and Breyer in part, ruled in the per curiam opinion that such counting absent uniform statewide standards violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that all counting efforts had to have been completed by December 12, 2000—the same day the Court issued the opinion and three days after the Court halted the counting of the ballots.

Bibliography

Ackerman, Bruce. We the People, Volume I: Foundations. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Amar, Akhil Reed. The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998.

Bell, Derrick A. And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest For Racial Justice. New York: Basic Books, 1989.

Bickel, Alexander. The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics. 2nd ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986.

Clayton, Cornell W., and Howard Gillman, eds. Supreme Court Decision making: New Institutionalist Approaches. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Ely, John Hart. Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980.

Griffin, Stephen M. American Constitutionalism: From Theory to Practice. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Horwitz, Morton J. The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Kutler, Stanley I. Judicial Power and Reconstruction Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.

McClosky, Robert G. The American Supreme Court. 3d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Neustadt, Richard E. Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York: Wiley, 1960.

O'Brien, David M. Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics. New York: Norton, 2000.

Rosenberg, Gerald N. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Thayer, James B. "The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law." Harvard Law Review 7(1893): 129.

Prior to the twentieth century, the United States Supreme Court issued few important decisions concerning education, and virtually none dealing with schooling at the elementary and secondary levels. Schooling has always been considered primarily a state and local government function in America, and it was not until well into the twentieth century that the Court seriously imposed on the states provisions of the U.S. Constitution that have turned out to be importantly relevant to education.

By contrast, in the second half of the twentieth century, the Court became a major force in shaping American education, interacting with most of the key educational policy issues confronting society during that era. Many of these issues have been extraordinarily controversial, both as education questions and as legal questions.

Especially from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, the Court largely allied itself with the views of "liberals" and thwarted state and local educational policies that were seen to run counter to "liberal" values. Starting in the late 1970s and continuing into the early twenty-first century, however, the Court has become more cautious about imposing Constitutional restraints on the educational process. The decisive, if changing, role of the Court in American education is illustrated by decisions in three major areas: religion, race, and the individual rights of students.

Religion

Following World War I, nativist movements around the nation prompted some state legislatures to try to restrict, or even close, private schools. But in a series of decisions in the 1920s - most importantly Meyerv. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters - the Court declared that parents have a federal Constitutional right to educate their children in private schools, subject to reasonable regulation of those schools by the state. This legal principle, based in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, has helped preserve the Catholic school system that grew up in the nineteenth century in response to Protestant domination of public schools and the insistence at the time on Protestant-based prayer and Bible reading in public schools. In 1972, in an even greater deference to religiously based parental claims, the Court decided in Wisconsin v. Yoder that Amish parents, given their long history of responsible other-worldliness, had a due process right to withhold their children from school once they reach age sixteen.

Starting in the 1960s, however, the Court's attention turned to cleansing the public schools of religion. For example, in Engel v. Vitale and School District v. Schempp, it prohibited government-sponsored school prayer and Bible reading, and in Epperson v. Arkansas it voided a ban on the teaching of evolution in public schools as violations of the First Amendment's prohibition against the "establishment" of religion.

At the same time the Court was insisting that the public schools must be secular, it also became leery of direct public financial assistance of private elementary and secondary schools, which were, in the 1960s and 1970s, overwhelmingly Catholic. To be sure, in three earlier cases the Court upheld the public provision of bus rides in Everson v. Board of Education and regular textbooks in Board of Educationv. Allen to children attending nonpublic schools and the exemption of religious schools from the property tax in Walz v. Tax Commission. Nevertheless, in the early 1970s the Court announced a series of decisions - most importantly Lemon v. Kurtzman and Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist - that invalidated financial aid to nonpublic schools and their users. These decisions were based primarily on the theory that the "primary effect" of this funding was the support of religion. Overall, then, by the mid-1970s the Court seemed committed to an interpretation of the First Amendment's "establishment" clause that called for a "high wall of separation" between church and state.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the Court held fast to its opposition to prayer in the public schools. In Wallace v. Jaffree it extended the ban in 1985 to cover a religiously motivated, required "moment of silence," with the Lee v. Weisman decision in 1992 to include invocations and benedictions at public school graduation ceremonies, and in 2000 to student-led prayers at high school football games in the Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe decision. In the same vein, in Edwards v. Aguillard in 1987 it struck down as violating the "establishment clause" a law seeking to pair the teaching of evolution with creation science, and in 1994 it invalidated a public school district specially constructed for a group of Hasidic Jews in Board of Education of Kiryas Joel v. Grumet.

Yet the Court has also become much more deferential to policies designed to accommodate religious freedom inside schools. Concern for the rights of students to their First Amendment guaranteed "free exercise" of religion has led to the development of "equal access" policies: some adopted by educational institutions; others enacted by legislatures. The Court has upheld these arrangements, allowing student religious groups to use school facilities once that privilege has been accorded to other student groups, in 1981 in Widmar v. Vincent at the university level and in Board of Education of West-side Community Schools v. Mergens in 1990 at the secondary-school level. Moreover, in 1995, on "free speech" grounds, the Court held in Rosenberger v. University of Virginia that when college student fees were used to fund various student newspapers, religious student groups had to be included as beneficiaries.

Moreover, on the issue of the aid to private schools, starting in the 1980s the Court began to permit many more types of financial assistance. These have ranged from tax deductions for financial contributions made to private schools in Mueller v. Allen; to the provision of a sign language interpreter for a deaf student in a private school in Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District; reading specialists and similar assistance for low-income private school pupils in Agostini v. Felton; and computers and other educational materials to private schools in Mitchellv. Helms. At the level of higher education, the Court even upheld a program under which a state would pay for a student's education to become a clergyman in Witters v. Washington Department of Services for the Blind.

In sum, the Court has clearly backed away from a rigid adherence to the "high wall of separation" vision of the First Amendment. Yet, the legal doctrine in this area has become so convoluted that in 2001 legal scholars were quite uncertain about whether it is constitutional for states and school districts to adopt, as three had, school choice plans that permit families to pay for tuition at private schools (including religious schools) with publicly funded vouchers.

Race

Starting in 1954 the Court centrally immersed itself in issues of race and American education by taking the lead in dismantling the system of official and intentional segregation that marked American public schools not only in the South, but also in many school districts throughout the nation. Before its famous 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the Court tolerated a scheme of "separate but equal" as in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). During the twenty-years leading up to Brown, the Court issued several-decisions - Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada and Sweat v. Painter - invalidating evasive schemes that pretended to treat whites and blacks equally, but clearly did not. But in Brown I, the Court relied upon the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to declare "separate" inherently "unequal" and a year later, in Brown II, it ordered public school desegregation "with all deliberate speed."

Although the Court then became embroiled in "massive resistance" strategies throughout much of the South, it held its ground. For example, in 1964 the Griffin v. County School Board decision prevented districts from closing their schools to avoid desegregation. In 1968 it rejected in Green v. County School Board purported "choice" plans that left schools identifiably black and white. In 1971 the Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education decision refused to approve a neighborhood school assignment policy that maintained the prior system of black and white schools. Norwood v. Harrison blocked in 1973 desegregation-evading schemes that sought to fund an alternative system of private "white academies," and the Runyon v. McCrary decision in 1976 precluded private schools from excluding applicants because they were black.

In 1973 in Keyes v. School District No. 1, the Court also extended the reach of Brown to northern and western school districts when it could be shown that officials had deliberately drawn school lines, erected new schools, and made other decisions on the basis of race. And with the help of Congressional enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the intervention of federal government officials from the executive branch, and the tireless work of many federal district judges often working in a hostile local environment, what has became known as formal "de jure" school segregation was rooted out.

Yet over time it became clear that continued racial isolation in public schools and the accompanying continued lower academic achievement of non-white pupils is not so easily blamed on the official racism of identified state and local school officials. The combination of (1) individual residential decisions by white (and non-white) families; (2) the suburbanization of America and the traditional existence outside the South of many small school districts surrounding the large central city district;(3) national and local housing policies; (4) persistent differences in family poverty between whites and non-whites; and other factors demonstrate that de facto school segregation, especially in urban cities, is not primarily caused by, and can not easily be eliminated by, the deliberate actions of local public school officials.

Although some legal and policy scholars and political leaders called for the end of racial isolation whatever its cause, others began to challenge the fairness, desirability, or feasibility of doing so. By 1974 a closely divided Supreme Court gave an early signal that it was going to start withdrawing the judiciary from this battle. It refused to bring the Detroit suburbs into a proposed metropolitan remedy of a school segregation case in which the federal district judge was presented with a Detroit public school district that had already become overwhelmingly populated by black children in Milliken v. Bradley. Starting in the 1990s, it has been telling lower federal courts to relinquish their supervision of school districts, thereby freeing local officials from the affirmative obligation to keep their schools from becoming racially identifable, for instance Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools v. Dowell and Freeman v. Pitts. And it voided a remedy adopted by a federal district judge in a Kansas City case that had imposed substantial obligations upon the state and was seen impermissibly to involve the surrounding suburbs in Missouri v. Jenkins.

Nonetheless, something of a political turnaround took place in many venues across the nation. Concluding that merely ending obvious official discrimination against minorities was insufficient, many public and private entities (prodded by federal agencies) began to engage in affirmative action. Some saw this as a way to remedy institutional or invisible racism that continued; others viewed it as desirable social policy even in a setting that was no longer officially hostile to racial minorities. Selective colleges and universities began to give preferences to non-white applicants; some employers, including school district employers, did the same; some school districts that had previously fought tenaciously for segregation turned completely about and were now committed to racially balanced schools.

But this practice has generated its own backlash, into which the Court has been drawn. Although a badly divided Court declared in 1978 that race was one of the many factors that colleges could legally employ in order to decide who to admit as students in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, by the mid-1990s the Court had became much more hostile to affirmative action efforts outside of education. If the official action was not racially neutral and was not part of a remedy designed to undo past specific acts of illegal segregation, then the Court decided, in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, that deliberate race-based actions said to benefit minorities were just as illegal as those adopted to harm them.

As a result, legal scholars in 2001 were uncertain whether affirmative action engaged in by selective high schools and selective colleges was still permissible. Indeed, it was unclear whether racially prompted school busing and other school assignment decisions at the elementary and secondary school levels could be kept in place once a formerly discriminating school district had been declared "unitary" by having eliminated the past vestiges of official segregation.

Individual Rights of Students

The Court's dealing with free speech and other constitutional rights of individual public school children has undergone something of a zig-zag as well. During World War II, the Court relied upon the First Amendment's "free speech" clause to uphold the refusal of religiously motivated Jehovah's Witnesses to participate in the flag salute at school in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette. Student free speech rights were much further strengthened during the Vietnam War, when the Court protected affirmative student rights of expression at school in the form of non-disruptive wearing of antiwar arm bands in Tinker v. Des Moines School District. In that same period, the Court extended to students the right to a hearing before serious disciplinary penalties are imposed on them, thereby bringing the Fourteenth Amendment's "procedural due process" clause into the schoolhouse in Goss v. Lopez. Later, in Board of Education Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico, the Court, on free speech grounds, thwarted religiously inspired efforts to rid school libraries of books that offended some parent groups.

But in subsequent cases, starting in the late 1970s, the Court has drawn back from this pro-student rights' agenda. It allowed public officials to discipline a student who gave a "lewd" speech at an assembly in Bethel School District No. 403 v. Frazer; to delete pages from a high school student newspaper in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier; to impose corporal punishment on public school children in Ingraham v. Wright; and to search student possessions (e.g., purses) under circumstances that would be illegal if done to adults in normal circumstances in New Jersey v. T.L.O. The Court also declined to get involved with academic dismissals at the college level in its decision Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz.

Hence, while it remains true that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate," it is also now quite clear that school children have many fewer rights than adults have.

Although the Court has involved itself in many additional important issues as well (e.g., teachers' rights, gender discrimination, bilingual education, and the rights of disabled children), the three areas discussed illustrate not only the Court's great importance to American education, but also the Court's own shifting view of its role.

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Reutter, E. Edmund. 1998. The Law of Public Education, 4th edition. Westbury, NY: Foundation.

Yudorf, Mark G.; Kirp, David L.; Levin, Betsy; and Moran, Rachel F. 2001. Educational Policy and the Law. Belmont, CA: West/Thomson Learning.

— STEPHEN D. SUGARMAN

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest federal court. Although it was explicitly recognized in Article III of the Constitution, it was not formally established until passage of the Judiciary Act of 1789 (1 Stat. 73) and was not organized until 1790. Though its size and jurisdiction have changed over time, the Supreme Court has fulfilled its two main functions: acting as the final interpreter of state and federal law and establishing procedural rules for the federal courts.

Composition

The Supreme Court, some- times called the High Court, is comprised of a chief justice and eight associate justices. Article III provides that the justices of the Court are to be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. Once appointed, a justice may not be removed from office except by congressional impeachment. Because of this provision, many justices have remained on the bench into their eighties.

In 1789 the Court was initially comprised of six members, but membership was increased to seven in 1807. In 1837 an eighth and ninth justice were added, and in 1863 the number rose to ten. Congress lowered the number to eight to prevent President Andrew Johnson from appointing anyone, and since 1869 the Court has been comprised of nine justices.

The only modern attempt to alter the size of the Court occurred in 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to "pack" the Court by trying to add justices more sympathetic to his political ideals. Between 1935 and 1937, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional numerous pieces of Roosevelt's New Deal program that attempted to regulate the national economy. Most of the conservative judges who voted against the New Deal statutes were over the age of seventy. Roosevelt proposed that justices be allowed to retire at age seventy with full pay. Any judge who declined this offer would be forced to have an assistant with full voting rights. This plan was met with hostility by Democrats and Republicans and ultimately rejected as an act of political interference.

When the office of chief justice is vacant, the president may choose the new chief justice from among the associate justices but does not need to do so. Whenever the chief justice is unable to perform his or her duties or the office is vacant, the associate justice who has been on the Court the longest performs the duties. The Court can take official action with as few as six members joining in deliberation. However, extremely important cases will sometimes be postponed until all nine justices can participate.

Court Term

The Court sits in Washington, D.C., and begins its term on the first Monday in October of each year. It may also hold adjourned terms or special terms whenever required. These special calendars are reserved for emergency matters that usually occur when the Court is in recess between July and October. Between October and June 30 of the following year, the Court hears oral arguments for each case in its courtroom, confers and votes on the case, and then assigns a justice to write the majority opinion. An opinion must be released on every case by the end of the Court's term. However, if the Court cannot agree on how to resolve a case, it may hold the case over until the next term and schedule further oral arguments.

Administration of the Court

The law provides for the appointment of a clerk of the Supreme Court, a deputy clerk, a marshall, a court reporter, a librarian, judicial law clerks, secretaries to the justices, and an administrative assistant to help with court management. The law also provides for the printing of Supreme Court decisions to ensure that they will be available to the public. The Court also disseminates its opinions electronically.

Jurisdiction

The Judiciary Act of 1789 gave the Supreme Court authority to hear certain appeals brought from the lower federal courts and the state courts. The Court was also given power to issue various kinds of orders, or writs, to enforce its decisions.

Article III of the Constitution declares that the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction "[i]n all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a state shall be a party… ." Original jurisdiction is the authority to hear a case from the outset. Nevertheless, Congress has enacted legislation giving the district courts concurrent jurisdiction in cases dealing with ambassadors and foreign consul as well as in cases between the U.S. government and one or more state governments. The Supreme Court retains exclusive jurisdiction only in suits between state governments, which often involve boundary disputes. These cases arise infrequently and are usually placed before special masters who hear the evidence, make findings, and recommend a decision that is acceptable to the Court.

Article III states that the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction extends to all federal cases "with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." Appellate cases coming to the Court from the lower federal courts usually come from the thirteen courts of appeals, although they may come from the Court of Military Appeals or, under special circumstances, directly from the district courts. Appellate cases may also come from the state courts of last resort, usually the state's supreme court.

Until 1891 losing parties in the lower federal courts and state courts of last resort had the right to appeal their cases to the Supreme Court. The Court's docket was crowded with appeals, many of which raised routine or frivolous claims. In 1891 Congress created nine courts of appeals to correct errors in routine cases. (28 U.S.C.A. ch. 3). This reduced the Supreme Court's caseload, but parties often retained statutory rights to have their cases reviewed by the Court.

In 1925 Congress reformed, at the Court's insistence, the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction by restricting the categories of cases in which litigants were afforded an appeal by right to the Supreme Court. In addition, the Judiciary Act of 1925, 43 Stat. 936, gave the Court the power to issue writs of certiorari to review all cases, federal or state, posing "federal questions of substance." The writ of certiorari gives the Court discretionary review, allowing it to address some issues and ignore others. Because of these reforms, the courts of appeals are the final decision-making courts in 98 percent of federal cases.

In 1988 Congress passed the Act to Improve the Administration of Justice, 102 Stat. 663. This law eliminated most appeals by right to the Supreme Court, requiring the Court to hear appeals only in cases involving federal civil rights laws, legislative reapportionment, federal antitrust actions, and a few other matters. As a result of this growth in discretionary jurisdiction, the Supreme Court has the ability to set its own agenda.

A party who seeks review of a decision petitions the Court for a writ of certiorari, an ancient pleading form that grants the right for review. The justices deliberate in private to decide whether the issues presented by the case are significant enough to merit review. They operate under an informal rule of four, which means that certiorari will be granted if any four justices favor it. If certiorari is granted, the justices can decide the case on the papers submitted or schedule a full argument before the Court. If certiorari is denied, the matter ends there. With discretionary review, the justices have complete freedom in deciding whether to hear the case, and no one may question or appeal their decision.

The Supreme Court also has special jurisdiction to answer certified questions sent to it from a federal court of appeals or from the U.S. Claims Court. The Supreme Court can either give instructions that the lower court is bound to follow or require the court to provide the record so that the Supreme Court can decide the entire lawsuit. Certification is rarely used.

Decisions

The decisions of the Supreme Court, whether by a denial of certiorari or by an opinion issued following oral argument, are final and cannot be appealed. A Supreme Court decision based on an interpretation of the Constitution may be changed by constitutional amendment. Congress may modify a decision that is based on the interpretation of an act of Congress by passing a law that directs the Court as to congressional intent and purpose. Finally, the Court may overrule itself, although it rarely does so.

Rule Making

Congress has conferred upon the Supreme Court the power to prescribe rules of procedure that the Court and the lower federal courts must follow. The Court has promulgated rules that govern civil and criminal cases in the district courts, bankruptcy proceedings, admiralty cases, copyrights cases, and appellate proceedings.

See: judicial review.

A federal court; the highest body in the judicial branch. The Supreme Court is composed of a chief justice and eight associate justices, all of whom are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. (See photo, next page.) They serve on the Court as long as they choose, subject only to impeachment. Each state also has a supreme court; these courts are all courts of appeals, primarily hearing cases that have already been tried. The federal Supreme Court (“the” Supreme Court) has the final word on interpretation of all laws and of the Constitution itself.

Supreme Court of the United States
Established in	1789
Jurisdiction	United States
Location	Washington, D.C.
Coordinates	38°53′26.55″N 77°00′15.64″W / 38.8907083°N 77.0043444°W / 38.8907083; -77.0043444Coordinates: 38°53′26.55″N 77°00′15.64″W / 38.8907083°N 77.0043444°W / 38.8907083; -77.0043444
Composition method	Presidential nomination with Senate confirmation
Authorized by	U.S. Constitution
Judge term length	Life tenure
Number of positions	9, by statute
Website	Supreme Court of the United States
Chief Justice of the United States
Currently	John G. Roberts
Since	September 29, 2005

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The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal judiciary. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justices, who are nominated by the President and confirmed with the "advice and consent" (majority vote) of the Senate. Once appointed, Justices effectively have life tenure, serving "during good Behaviour",^[1] which terminates only upon death, resignation, retirement, or conviction on impeachment.^[2] The Court meets in Washington, D.C. in the United States Supreme Court building. The Supreme Court is primarily an appellate court, but it has original jurisdiction over a small range of cases.^[3]. The Supreme Court is sometimes informally referred to as the High Court, or by the initialism SCOTUS.

Contents 1 History 2 Composition 2.1 Size of the Court 2.2 Nomination 2.3 Confirmation 2.4 Recess appointments 2.5 Tenure 3 Current membership 3.1 Retired justices 3.2 Current nominee 3.3 Seniority and seating 3.4 Salary 3.5 Political leanings 4 Quarters 5 Jurisdiction 5.1 Justices as Circuit Justices 6 How a case moves through the Court 7 Institutional powers and constraints 8 Criticisms 9 Visiting the Court 10 See also 11 Notes 12 References 13 Further reading 14 External links

History

Main article: History of the Supreme Court of the United States

The history of the Supreme Court is frequently described in terms of the Chief Justices who have presided over it.

The early Court heard few cases, and its first decision was West v. Barnes (1791), a case involving a procedural issue.^[4] Initially, during the tenures of Chief Justices Jay, Rutledge, and Ellsworth (1789–1801), the Court lacked a home of its own and any real prestige.

That changed during the Marshall Court (1801–1836), which declared the Court to be the supreme arbiter of the Constitution (see Marbury v. Madison) and made several important rulings which gave shape and substance to the constitutional balance of power between the federal government (referred to at the time as the "general government") and the states. In Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, the Court ruled that it had the power to correct interpretations of the federal Constitution made by state supreme courts. Both Marbury and Martin confirmed that the Supreme Court was the body entrusted with maintaining the consistent and orderly development of federal law.

The Marshall Court ended the practice of each judge issuing his opinion seriatim, a remnant of British tradition, and instead began issuing a single majority opinion. The Marshall Court also saw Congress impeach a sitting Justice, Samuel Chase, who was acquitted. This impeachment was one piece of the power struggle between the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists after the election of 1800 and the subsequent change in power. The failure to remove Chase is thought to signal the recognition by Congress of judicial independence.

The Taney Court (1836–1864) made several important rulings, such as Sheldon v. Sill, which held that while Congress may not limit the subjects the Supreme Court may hear, it may limit the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts to prevent them from hearing cases dealing with certain subjects. The Taney Court is primarily remembered for its ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the case which may have helped precipitate the United States Civil War. In the years following the Civil War, the Chase, Waite, and Fuller Courts (1864–1910) interpreted the new Civil War amendments to the Constitution, and developed the doctrine of substantive due process (Lochner v. New York; Adair v. United States).

Under the White and Taft Courts (1910–1930), the substantive due process doctrine reached its first apogee (Adkins v. Children's Hospital), and the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment applied some provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states through the Incorporation doctrine.

During the Hughes, Stone, and Vinson Courts (1930–1953), the court gained its own accommodation and radically changed its interpretation of the Constitution in order to facilitate Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal (West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, Wickard v. Filburn), giving an expansive reading to the powers of the Federal Government.

The Warren Court (1953–1969) made many alternately celebrated and controversial rulings expanding the application of the Constitution to civil liberties, leading a renaissance in substantive due process. It held that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional (Brown v. Board of Education); the Constitution protects a general right to privacy (Griswold v. Connecticut); public schools cannot have official prayer (Engel v. Vitale) or mandatory Bible readings (Abington School District v. Schempp); many guarantees of the Bill of Rights apply to the states (e.g., Mapp v. Ohio, Miranda v. Arizona); an equal protection clause is not contained in the Fifth Amendment (Bolling v. Sharpe); and that the Constitution grants the right of retaining a court-appointed attorney for those unable to pay for one (Gideon v. Wainwright).

The Burger Court (1969–1986) ruled the Constitution protected a woman's right to privacy and control over her own body, thus striking down outright abortion bans (Roe v. Wade), reached controversial rulings on affirmative action (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke) and campaign finance regulation (Buckley v. Valeo); ruled that the methods several states used to implement the death penalty were unconstitutional (Furman v. Georgia); but also ruled that the death penalty itself was not unconstitutional (Gregg v. Georgia).^[5]

The Rehnquist Court (1986–2005) was noted for its revival of the concept of federalism, which included restrictions on Congressional power under both the Commerce Clause (United States v. Lopez, United States v. Morrison) and the fifth section of the Fourteenth Amendment (City of Boerne v. Flores), as well as strengthening state sovereign immunity (Seminole Tribe v. Florida, Alden v. Maine). It was also noted for its 5 to 4 decision in Bush v. Gore which ended the electoral recount during the presidential election of 2000 and led to the presidency of George W. Bush. In addition, the Rehnquist court decriminalized homosexual sex (Lawrence v. Texas); narrowed the right of labor unions to picket (Lechmere Inc. v. NLRB); altered the Roe v. Wade framework for assessing abortion regulations (Planned Parenthood v. Casey); and gave sweeping meaning to ERISA pre-emption (Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., Egelhoff v. Egelhoff), thereby denying plaintiffs access to state courts with the consequence of limiting compensation for torts to very circumscribed remedies (Aetna Health Inc. v. Davila, CIGNA Healthcare of Texas Inc. v. Calad); and affirmed the power of Congress to extend the term of copyright (Eldred v. Ashcroft).

The Roberts Court (2005–present) began with the confirmation and swearing in of Chief Justice John G. Roberts on September 29, 2005, and is the current presiding court. The Court under Chief Justice Roberts is perceived^[6] as being more conservative than the previous court. Some of the major rulings so far have been in the areas of abortion (Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, Gonzales v. Carhart); anti-trust legislation (Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc.); the death penalty (Baze v. Rees, Kennedy v. Louisiana); the Fourth Amendment (Hudson v. Michigan); free speech of government employees and of high school students (Garcetti v. Ceballos, Morse v. Frederick); military detainees (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Boumediene v. Bush); school desegregation (Parents v. Seattle); voting rights (Crawford v. Marion County Election Board); and the Second Amendment (District of Columbia v. Heller).

Composition

Size of the Court

The United States Constitution does not specify the size of the Supreme Court. Article III of the Constitution gives Congress the power to fix the number of Justices. The Judiciary Act of 1789 called for the appointment of six Justices. As the country grew geographically, Congress increased the number of Justices to correspond with the growing number of judicial circuits: the court was expanded to seven members in 1807, nine in 1837 and ten in 1863.

At the request of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, Congress passed the Judicial Circuits Act (1866) which provided that the next three Justices to retire would not be replaced; thus, the size of the Court would eventually reach seven by attrition. Consequently, one seat was removed in 1866 and a second in 1867. However, this law did not play out to its fruition, for in the Judiciary Act of 1869,^[7] also known as the Circuit Judges Act, the number of Justices was again set at nine, where it has since remained.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to expand the Court in 1937; his plan would have allowed the President to appoint one additional Justice for each existing Justice who reached the age of 70 years 6 months but did not retire from the bench, until the Court reached a maximum size of fifteen justices. Ostensibly, the proposal was made to ease the burdens of the docket on the elderly judges, but the President's actual purpose was to add Justices who would favor his New Deal policies, which had been regularly ruled unconstitutional by the Court.^[8] This plan, usually called the "Court-packing Plan," failed in Congress. The Court, however, gradually acquiesced to Roosevelt's New Deal programs and thereby removed the President's need to alter it. Within six years eight of the nine justices either retired or died, allowing Roosevelt to appoint eight Justices total to the Supreme Court (second only to George Washington) and to promote one Associate Justice to Chief Justice.^[9]

Nomination

Article Two of the United States Constitution gives the President power to nominate Justices, who are then appointed "by and with the advice and consent of the Senate." Most Presidents nominate individuals who broadly share their ideological views. In many cases, however, a Justice's decisions may be contrary to what the nominating President anticipated. A famous instance was Chief Justice Earl Warren; President Dwight D. Eisenhower expected him to be a conservative judge, but his decisions are arguably among the most liberal in the Court's history. Eisenhower later called the appointment "the biggest damn fool mistake I ever made."^[10]. Another Justice whose decisions ran contrary to what was believed to be his ideology is David Souter, who was nominated to the High Court in 1990 by President George H. W. Bush. Many pundits and politicians at the time expected Souter to be a conservative; however, since becoming a Justice, his opinions have generally fallen on the liberal side of the political spectrum.

Because the Constitution does not set any qualifications for service as a Justice, the President may nominate anyone to serve. However, that person must receive the confirmation of the Senate, meaning that a majority of that body must find that person to be a suitable candidate for a lifetime appointment on the nation's highest court.

Confirmation

In modern times, the confirmation process has attracted considerable attention from special-interest groups, many of which lobby senators to confirm or to reject a nominee, depending on whether the nominee's track record aligns with the group's views. The Senate Judiciary Committee conducts hearings, questioning nominees to determine their suitability. At the close of confirmation hearings, the Committee votes on whether the nomination should go to the full Senate with a positive, negative or neutral report.

The Roberts Court, 2006–2009.
Front row: Justices Kennedy and Stevens, Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Scalia and Souter.
Back row: Justices Breyer, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Alito.

The Committee's practice of personally interviewing nominees is relatively recent, beginning with Harlan Fiske Stone in 1925. Some western senators were concerned with his links to Wall Street and expressed their opposition when Stone was nominated. Stone proposed what was then the novelty of appearing before the Judiciary Committee to answer questions; his testimony helped secure a confirmation vote with very little opposition. The second nominee to appear before the Committee was Felix Frankfurter, who only addressed (at the Committee's request) what he considered to be slanderous allegations against him. The modern practice of the Committee questioning nominees on their judicial views began with the nomination of John Marshall Harlan II in 1955; the nomination came shortly after the Court handed down the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, and several Southern senators attempted to block Harlan's confirmation, hence the decision to testify.^[11]

A simple majority vote is required to confirm or to reject a nominee. Once the Committee reports out the nomination, the whole Senate considers it. Rejections are relatively uncommon; the Senate has explicitly rejected twelve Supreme Court nominees in its history. The most recent rejection of a nominee by vote of the full Senate came in 1987, when the Senate refused to confirm Robert Bork.

Not everyone nominated by the President has received a floor vote in the Senate. Although Senate rules do not necessarily allow a negative vote in committee to block a Supreme Court nomination, a nominee may be filibustered once debate on the nomination has begun in the full Senate. A filibuster indefinitely prolongs the debate thereby preventing a final vote on the nominee. While senators may attempt to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee in an attempt to thwart confirmation, no nomination for Associate Justice has ever been filibustered. However, President Lyndon Johnson's nomination of sitting Associate Justice Abe Fortas to succeed Earl Warren as Chief Justice was successfully filibustered in 1968.

It is also possible for the President to withdraw a nominee's name before the actual confirmation vote occurs. This usually happens when the President feels that the nominee has little chance of being confirmed: most recently, President George W. Bush withdrew his nomination of Harriet Miers before Committee hearings had begun, citing concerns about Senate requests during her confirmation process for access to internal Executive Branch documents resulting from her position as White House Counsel. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan withdrew the nomination of Douglas H. Ginsburg because of news reports containing marijuana use allegations.

Before 1981 the approval process of Justices was usually rapid. From the Truman through Nixon administrations, Justices were typically approved within one month. From the Reagan administration through the confirmation hearings of George W. Bush's nominees, however, the process has taken much longer. Some believe this is because Congress sees Justices as playing a more political role than in the past.^[12]

Recess appointments

When the Senate is in recess, the President may make a temporary appointment without the Senate's advice and consent. Such a recess appointee to the Supreme Court holds office only until the end of the next Senate session (at most, less than two years). To continue to serve thereafter and be compensated for his or her service, the nominee must be confirmed by the Senate. Of the two Chief Justices and six Associate Justices who have received recess appointments, only Chief Justice John Rutledge was not subsequently confirmed for a full term. No president since Dwight Eisenhower has made a recess appointment to the Supreme Court and the practice has become highly controversial even when applied to lower federal courts. The practice of recess appointments has been curtailed by the Senate's use of pro forma sessions.

Tenure

The Constitution provides that justices "shall hold their offices during good behavior" (unless appointed during a Senate recess). The term "good behavior" is well understood to mean Justices may serve for the remainder of their lives, although they can voluntarily resign or retire. A Justice can also be removed by Congressional impeachment and conviction. However, only one Justice has been impeached by the House (Samuel Chase, in 1805) and he was acquitted in the Senate, making impeachment as a restraint on the court something of a paper tiger. Moves to impeach sitting justices have occurred more recently (for example, William O. Douglas was the subject of hearings twice, once in 1953 and again in 1970), but they have not reached a vote in the House.

Because Justices have indefinite tenure, it is impossible to know when a vacancy will next occur. Sometimes vacancies arise in quick succession, as in the early 1970s when Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr. and William H. Rehnquist were nominated to replace Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan II, who retired within a week of each other. Sometimes a great length of time passes between nominations such as the eleven years between Stephen Breyer's nomination in 1994 and the departures of Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (by death and retirement, respectively) in 2005 and 2006.

Despite the variability, nearly all Presidents so far have been able to appoint at least one Justice. The four exceptions are William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, and Jimmy Carter. Harrison died a month after taking office, though his successor (John Tyler) made an appointment during that presidential term. Taylor likewise died early in his presidential term, although his successor (Millard Fillmore) also made a Supreme Court nomination before the end of that term. Johnson was denied the opportunity to appoint a Justice by a contraction in the size of the Court (see Size of the Court above). Carter is the only President who completed at least one full term in office without making a nomination to the Court during his presidency.

Current membership

Below is a table of current^[update] Supreme Court Justices. ("Conf. Vote" = Senate Confirmation Vote)

Name	Born	Appt. by	Conf. vote	Age at appt.	First day	Prior positions
John G. Roberts (Chief Justice)	01955-01-27 January 27, 1955 (age &0000000000000054.00000054) in Buffalo, New York	G.W. Bush	78-22	50	02005-09-29 September 29, 2005	Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (2003–2005); Private practice (1993–2003); Professor, Georgetown University Law Center (1992–2005); Principal Deputy Solicitor General (1989–1993); Private practice (1986–1989); Associate Counsel to the President (1982–1986); Special Assistant to the Attorney General (1981–1982)
John Paul Stevens	01920-04-20 April 20, 1920 (age &0000000000000089.00000089) in Chicago, Illinois	Ford	98-0	55	01975-12-19 December 19, 1975	Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (1970–1975); Private practice (1948–1970); Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School (1950–1954); Lecturer, Northwestern University School of Law (1954–1958)
Antonin Scalia	01936-03-11 March 11, 1936 (age &0000000000000073.00000073) in Trenton, New Jersey	Reagan	98-0	50	01986-09-26 September 26, 1986	Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1982–1986); Professor, University of Chicago Law School (1977–1982); Assistant Attorney General (1974–1977); Professor, University of Virginia School of Law (1967–1974); Private practice (1961–1967)
Anthony Kennedy	01936-07-23 July 23, 1936 (age &0000000000000072.00000072) in Sacramento, California	Reagan	97-0	52	01988-02-18 February 18, 1988	Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1975–1988); Professor, McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific (1965–1988); Private practice (1963–1975)
Clarence Thomas	01948-06-23 June 23, 1948 (age &0000000000000061.00000061) in Pin Point, Georgia	G.H.W. Bush	52-48	43	01991-10-23 October 23, 1991	Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1990–1991); Chairman, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1982–1990); legislative assistant for Missouri Senator John Danforth (1979–1981); employed by Monsanto Company Inc. (1977–1979); Attorney General in Missouri under State Attorney General John Danforth (1974–1977)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg	01933-03-15 March 15, 1933 (age &0000000000000076.00000076) in Brooklyn, New York	Clinton	97-3	60	01993-08-10 August 10, 1993	Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1980–1993); General Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union (1973–1980); Professor, Columbia Law School (1972–1980); Professor, Rutgers University School of Law (1963–1972)
Stephen Breyer	01938-08-15 August 15, 1938 (age &0000000000000070.00000070) in San Francisco, California	Clinton	87-9	56	01994-08-03 August 3, 1994	Chief Judge, Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (1990–1994); Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (1980–1990); Professor, Harvard Law School (1967–1980)
Samuel Alito	01950-04-01 April 1, 1950 (age &0000000000000059.00000059) in Trenton, New Jersey	G.W. Bush	58-42	56	January 31, 2006	Circuit Judge, Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (1990–2006); Professor, Seton Hall University School of Law (1999–2004); U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey (1987–1990); Deputy Assistant Attorney General (1985–1987); Assistant to the Solicitor General (1981–1985); Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey (1977–1981)

As of April 2009, the average age of the U.S. Supreme Court justices is 69 years. See also Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Retired justices

Research suggests that justices sometimes strategically plan their decisions to leave the bench, with personal, institutional, and partisan factors playing a role.^[13] The fear of mental decline and death often motivates justices to step down. The desire to maximize the Court's strength and legitimacy through one retirement at a time, when the Court is in recess, and during non-presidential election years suggests a concern for institutional health. Finally, if at all possible, justices seek to depart under favorable presidents and Senates to ensure that a like-minded successor will be appointed.

Currently, there are two living retired Justices of the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter. As retired Justices, they may be designated for temporary assignments to sit with several United States Courts of Appeals. Nominally, such assignments are made by the Chief Justice; they are analogous to the types of assignments that may be given to judges of lower courts who have selected senior status, except that a retired Supreme Court Justice never sits as a member of the Supreme Court itself.

Name	Born	Appt. by	Conf. vote	Age at appt.	First day	Senior Status
Sandra Day O'Connor	01930-03-26 March 26, 1930 (age &0000000000000079.00000079) in El Paso, Texas	Reagan	99-0	55	September 25, 1981	January 31, 2006
David Souter	01939-09-17 September 17, 1939 (age &0000000000000069.00000069) in Melrose, Massachusetts	G.H.W. Bush	90-9	51	01990-10-09 October 9, 1990	June 29, 2009

Current nominee

President Barack Obama announced his choice of Sonia Sotomayor on May 26, 2009 to fill the seat left vacant by Justice Souter.^[14] He officially nominated Sotomayor to the U.S. Senate on June 1, 2009. If confirmed, Sotomayor would be the first Latina to serve on the Supreme Court, and one of two women serving. She would also join Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas as the sixth seated Catholic justice, although opinions vary as to what influence, if any, her religious affiliation would affect on her court decisions.^[15][16] See also the article on the demographics of the Supreme Court.

Seniority and seating

Many of the internal operations of the Court are organized by the seniority of the Justices; the Chief Justice is considered to be the most senior member of the Court, regardless of the length of his or her service. The Associate Justices are then ranked in order, by the length of their service.

During Court sessions, the Justices sit according to seniority, with the Chief Justice in the center, and the Associate Justices on alternating sides, with the most senior Associate Justice on the Chief Justice's immediate right, and the most junior Associate Justice seated on the left farthest away from the Chief Justice. Therefore, the current court sits as follows from left to right when looking at the bench from the perspective of a lawyer arguing before the Court: Breyer, Thomas, Kennedy, Stevens (most senior Associate Justice), Roberts (Chief Justice), Scalia, Souter, Ginsburg and Alito (most junior Associate Justice).

In the Justices' private conferences, the current practice is for Justices to speak and vote in order of seniority from the Chief Justice first to the most junior Associate Justice last. The most junior Associate Justice in these conferences is tasked with any menial labor the Justices may require as they convene alone, such as answering the door of their conference room, serving coffee, and transmitting the orders of the court to the court's clerk.^[17] Justice Joseph Story served the longest as the junior Justice, from February 3, 1812, to September 1, 1823, for a total of 4,228 days. Justice Stephen Breyer follows close behind, with 4,199 days when Samuel Alito joined the court on January 31, 2006.^[18]

Salary

Associate justices of the Supreme Court are paid $208,100 per year as of 2008, and the chief justice receives $217,400 per year.^[19]

Political leanings

While justices do not represent or receive official endorsements from political parties, as is accepted practice in the legislative and executive branches, jurists are informally categorized in legal and political circles as being judicial conservatives, moderates, or liberals. Such leanings, however, refer to legal outlook rather than a political or legislative one.

Six of the current justices of the court were appointed by Republican Presidents, while two were appointed by a Democratic President. It is popularly accepted that Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito compose the Court's conservative wing. Justices Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer are generally thought of as the Court's more liberal wing.^[20] Justice Anthony Kennedy, generally considered a conservative who "occasionally vote[s] with the liberals",^[21] is most likely to be the swing vote that determines the outcome of close cases.^[22]

Quarters

U.S. Supreme Court building.

Main article: United States Supreme Court building

The Supreme Court first met on 1 February 1790, at the Merchants' Exchange Building in New York City, which then was the national capital. Philadelphia became the capital city later in 1790, and the Court followed Congress and the President there, meeting briefly in Independence Hall, and then from 1791 to 1800 at Old City Hall at 5th and Chestnut Streets. After Washington, D.C., became the capital in 1800, the Court occupied various spaces in the United States Capitol building until 1935, when it moved into its own purpose-built home at One First Street Northeast, Washington, DC. The four-story building was designed in a classical style sympathetic to the surrounding buildings of the Capitol complex and Library of Congress by architect Cass Gilbert, and is clad in marble quarried chiefly in Vermont. The building includes space for the Courtroom, Justices' chambers, an extensive law library, various meeting spaces, and auxiliary services such as workshop, stores, cafeteria and a gymnasium. The Supreme Court building is within the ambit of the Architect of the Capitol, but maintains its own police force, the Supreme Court Police, separate from the Capitol Police.

Due chiefly to security concerns, the present building is being remodeled (2009) to allow installation of security monitors. The renovation will remove access to the building through the expansive and impressive front steps.^[23]

Jurisdiction

Main article: Procedures of the Supreme Court of the United States

Inscription on the wall of the Supreme Court Building from Marbury v. Madison, in which Chief Justice John Marshall (statue, foreground) outlined the concept of judicial review.

Section 2 of Article Three of the United States Constitution outlines the jurisdiction of the federal courts of the United States:

“

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States; between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

”

The jurisdiction of the federal courts was further limited by the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbade federal courts from hearing cases "commenced or prosecuted against [a State] by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State." However, states may waive this immunity, and Congress may abrogate the states' immunity in certain circumstances (see Sovereign immunity). In addition to constitutional constraints, Congress is authorized by Article III to regulate the court's appellate jurisdiction: for example, the federal courts may consider "Controversies ... between Citizens of different States" only if the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000; otherwise, the case may only be brought in state courts.

Further information: diversity jurisdiction

.

Exercise of this power (for example, the Detainee Treatment Act, which provided that "'no court, justice, or judge' shall have jurisdiction to consider the habeas application of a Guantanamo Bay detainee")^[24] can become controversial; see Jurisdiction stripping.

The Constitution specifies that the Supreme Court may exercise original jurisdiction in cases affecting ambassadors and other diplomats, and in cases in which a state is a party. In all other cases, however, the Court has only appellate jurisdiction. It considers cases based on its original jurisdiction very rarely; almost all cases are brought to the Supreme Court on appeal. In practice, the only original jurisdiction cases heard by the Court are disputes between two or more states.

The power of the Supreme Court to consider appeals from state courts, rather than just federal courts, was created by the Judiciary Act of 1789 and upheld early in the Court's history, by its rulings in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816) and Cohens v. Virginia (1821). The Supreme Court is the only federal court that has jurisdiction over direct appeals from state court decisions, although there are several devices that permit so-called "collateral review" of state cases.

Since Article Three of the United States Constitution stipulates that federal courts may only entertain "cases" or "controversies", the Supreme Court avoids deciding cases that are moot and does not render advisory opinions, as the supreme courts of some states may do. For example, in DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 312 (1974), the Court dismissed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a law school affirmative action policy because the plaintiff student had graduated since he began the lawsuit, and a decision from the Court on his claim would not be able to redress any injury he had suffered. The mootness exception is not absolute; if an issue is "capable of repetition yet evading review", the Court will address it even though the party before the Court would not himself be made whole by a favorable result. In Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), and other abortion cases, the Court addresses the merits of claims pressed by pregnant women seeking abortions even if they are no longer pregnant because it takes longer than the typical human gestation period to appeal a case through the lower courts to the Supreme Court.

Justices as Circuit Justices

The United States is divided into thirteen circuit courts of appeals, each of which is assigned a "Circuit Justice" from the Supreme Court. Although this concept has been in continuous existence throughout the history of the republic, its meaning has changed through time.

Under the Judiciary Act of 1789, each Justice was required to "ride circuit," or to travel within the assigned circuit and consider cases alongside local judges. This practice encountered opposition from many Justices, who cited the difficulty of travel. Moreover, several individuals opposed it on the grounds that a Justice could not be expected to be impartial in an appeal if he had previously decided the same case while riding circuit. Circuit riding was abolished in 1891. Today, the duties of a "Circuit Justice" are generally limited to receiving and deciding requests for stays in cases coming from the circuit or circuits to which the Justice is assigned, and other clerical tasks such as addressing certain requests for extensions of time. A Circuit Justice may (but in practice almost never does) sit as a judge of that circuit. When he or she does so, a Circuit Justice has seniority over the Chief Judge of that circuit.

The Chief Justice is traditionally assigned to the District of Columbia Circuit, the Federal Circuit and the Fourth Circuit, which includes Maryland and Virginia, the states surrounding the District of Columbia. Each Associate Justice is assigned to one or two judicial circuits.

After Justice Souter's retirement, circuits were assigned as follows:^[25]

For the D.C. Circuit, John G. Roberts, Jr.	For the Seventh Circuit, John Paul Stevens
For the First Circuit, Stephen G. Breyer	For the Eighth Circuit, Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
For the Second Circuit, Ruth Bader Ginsburg	For the Ninth Circuit, Anthony M. Kennedy
For the Third Circuit, Samuel A. Alito, Jr.	For the Tenth Circuit, Stephen G. Breyer
For the Fourth Circuit, John G. Roberts, Jr.	For the Eleventh Circuit, Clarence Thomas
For the Fifth Circuit, Antonin G. Scalia	For the Federal Circuit, John G. Roberts, Jr.
For the Sixth Circuit, John Paul Stevens

The circuit assignments often reflect the geographic regions where the assigned Justices served as judges or practitioners before joining the Supreme Court. Five of the current Justices are assigned to circuits on which they once sat as circuit judges: Chief Justice Roberts (D.C. Circuit), Justice Breyer (First Circuit), Justice Alito (Third Circuit), Justice Stevens (Seventh Circuit), and Justice Kennedy (Ninth Circuit). Furthermore, Justices Thomas and Ginsburg are assigned to the circuits that include their home states (the Eleventh and Second Circuits, respectively).

How a case moves through the Court

Main article: Procedures of the Supreme Court of the United States

Nearly all cases come before the Court by way of petitions for writs of certiorari, commonly referred to as "cert". The Court may review any case in the federal courts of appeals "by writ of certiorari granted upon the petition of any party to any civil or criminal case".^[26] The Court may only review "final judgments rendered by the highest court of a state in which a decision could be had" if those judgments involve a question of federal statutory or constitutional law.^[27] The party that lost in the lower court is the petitioner and the party that prevailed is the respondent. All case names before the Court are styled petitioner v. respondent, regardless of which party initiated the lawsuit in the trial court. For example, criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of the state and against an individual, as in State of Arizona v. Ernesto Miranda. If the defendant is convicted, and his conviction then is affirmed on appeal in the state supreme court, when he petitions for cert the name of the case becomes Miranda v. Arizona.

There are situations where the Court has original jurisdiction, such as when two states have a dispute against each other, or when there is a dispute between the United States and a state. In such instances, a case is filed with the Supreme Court directly. Examples of such cases include United States v. Texas, a case to determine whether a parcel of land belonged to the United States or to Texas, and Virginia v. Tennessee, a case turning on whether an incorrectly drawn boundary between two states can be changed by a state court, and whether the setting of the correct boundary requires Congressional approval. Though it has not happened since 1794, parties in an action at law in which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction may request that issues of fact be determined by a jury.^[28]

The common shorthand name for cases is typically the first party (the petitioner). For example, Brown v. Board of Education is referred to simply as Brown, and Roe v. Wade as Roe. The exception to this rule is when the name of a state, or the United States, or some government entity, is the first listed party. In that instance, the name of the second party is the shorthand name. For example, Iowa v. Tovar is referred to simply as Tovar, and Gonzales v. Raich is referred to simply as Raich, because the first party, Alberto Gonzales, was sued in his official capacity as the United States Attorney General.

A cert petition is voted on at a session of the Court called a conference. A conference is a private meeting of the nine Justices by themselves; the public and the Justices' clerks are excluded. If four Justices vote to grant the petition, the case proceeds to the briefing stage; otherwise, the case ends. Except in death penalty cases and other cases in which the Court orders briefing from the respondent, the respondent may, but is not required to, file a response to the cert petition.

The Court grants a petition for cert only for "compelling reasons," spelled out in the court's Rule 10. Such reasons include:

• to resolve a conflict in the interpretation of a federal law or a provision of the federal Constitution
• to correct an egregious departure from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings
• to resolve an important question of federal law, or to expressly review a decision of a lower court that conflicts directly with a previous decision of the Court.

When a conflict of interpretations arises from differing interpretations of the same law or constitutional provision issued by different federal circuit courts of appeals, lawyers call this situation a "circuit split". If the Court votes to deny a cert petition, as it does in the vast majority of such petitions that come before it, it does so typically without comment. A denial of a cert petition is not a judgment on the merits of a case, and the decision of the lower court stands as the final ruling in the case.

To manage the high volume of cert petitions received by the Court each year (of the more than 7,000 petitions the Court receives each year, it will usually request briefing and hear oral argument in 100 or fewer), the Court employs an internal case management tool known as the "cert pool." Currently, all justices except for Justice Stevens and Justice Alito participate in the cert pool.^[29][30][31]

When the Court grants a cert petition, the case is set for oral argument. At this point, both parties file briefs on the merits of the case, as distinct from reasons the parties may urge for granting or denying the cert petition. With the consent of the parties or approval of the Court, amici curiae may also file briefs. The Court holds two-week oral argument sessions each month from October through April. Each side has thirty minutes to present its argument, and during that time the Justices may interrupt the advocate and ask questions. The petitioner gives the first presentation, and may reserve some time to rebut the respondent's arguments after the respondent has concluded. Amici curiae may also present oral argument on behalf of one party if that party agrees. The Court advises counsel to assume that the Justices are familiar with and have read the briefs filed in a case.

At the conclusion of oral argument, the case is submitted for decision. Cases are decided by majority vote of the Justices. It is the Court's practice to issue decisions in all cases argued in a particular Term by the end of that Term. Within that Term, however, the Court is under no obligation to release a decision within any set time after oral argument. At the conclusion of oral argument, the Justices retire to another conference at which the preliminary votes are tallied, and the most senior Justice in the majority assigns the initial draft of the Court's opinion to a Justice on his or her side. Drafts of the Court's opinion, as well as any concurring or dissenting opinions,^[32] circulate among the Justices until the Court is prepared to announce the judgment in a particular case.

It is possible that, through recusals or vacancies, the Court divides evenly on a case. If that occurs, then the decision of the court below is affirmed, but does not establish binding precedent. In effect, it results in a return to the status quo ante. For a case to be heard, there must be a quorum of at least six justices.^[33] If a quorum is not available to hear a case and a majority of qualified justices believes that the case cannot be heard and determined in the next term, then the judgment of the court below is affirmed as if the Court had been evenly divided. For cases brought directly to the Supreme Court by direct appeal from a United States District Court, the Chief Justice may order the case remanded to the appropriate U.S. Court of Appeals for a final decision there.^[33]

The Court's opinions are published in three stages. First, a slip opinion is made available on the Court's web site and through other outlets. Next, several opinions are bound together in paperback form, called a preliminary print of United States Reports, the official series of books in which the final version of the Court's opinions appears. About a year after the preliminary prints are issued, a final bound volume of U.S. Reports is issued. The individual volumes of U.S. Reports are numbered so that users may cite this set of reports—or a competing version published by another commercial legal publisher—to allow those who read their pleadings and other briefs to find the cases quickly and easily.

At present there are 545 volumes of U.S. Reports. Lawyers use an abbreviated format to cite cases, in the form xxx U.S. xxx (yyyy). The number before the "U.S." refers to the volume number, and the number after the U.S. refers to the page within that volume. The number in parentheses is the year in which the case was decided. For instance, if a lawyer wanted to cite Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, and which appears on page 113 of volume 410 of U.S. Reports, he would write 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

Institutional powers and constraints

The Constitution does not explicitly grant the Supreme Court the power of judicial review; nevertheless, the power of this Court to overturn laws and executive actions it deems unlawful or unconstitutional is a well-established precedent. Many of the Founding Fathers accepted the notion of judicial review; in Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote: "A Constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute." The Supreme Court first established its power to declare laws unconstitutional in Marbury v. Madison (1803), consummating the system of checks and balances. This power allows judges to have the last word on allocation of authority among the three branches of the federal government, which grants them the ability to set bounds to their own authority, as well as to their immunity from outside checks and balances.

The Supreme Court cannot directly enforce its rulings; instead, it relies on respect for the Constitution and for the law for adherence to its judgments. One notable instance of nonacquiescence came in 1832, when the state of Georgia ignored the Supreme Court's decision in Worcester v. Georgia. President Andrew Jackson, who sided with the Georgia courts, is supposed to have remarked, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!";^[34] however, this alleged quotation has been disputed. State militia in the South also resisted the desegregation of public schools after the 1954 judgment Brown v. Board of Education. More recently, many feared that President Richard Nixon would refuse to comply with the Court's order in United States v. Nixon (1974) to surrender the Watergate tapes. Nixon, however, ultimately complied with the Supreme Court's ruling.

Some argue that the Supreme court is "the most separated and least checked of all branches of government."^[35] Justices are not required to stand for election by virtue of their tenure "during good behavior," and their pay may "not be diminished" while they hold their position (Section 1 of Article Three). Though subject to the process of impeachment, only one Justice has ever been impeached and no Supreme Court Justice has been removed from office. Supreme Court decisions have been purposefully overridden by constitutional amendment in only four instances: the Eleventh Amendment overturned Chisholm v. Georgia (1793); the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments in effect overturned Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857); the Sixteenth Amendment reversed Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co. (1895); and the Twenty-sixth Amendment overturned some portions of Oregon v. Mitchell (1970). However, when the Court rules on matters involving the interpretation of laws rather than of the Constitution, simple legislative action can reverse the decisions (for example, in 2009 Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter act, superseding the limitations given in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in 2007). Also, the Supreme Court is not immune from political and institutional restraints: lower federal courts and state courts sometimes resist doctrinal innovations, as do law enforcement officials.^[36]

In addition, there are other mechanisms by which the other two branches can restrain the Court. Congress could increase the number of justices, giving the President power to influence future decisions via appointments (as in Roosevelt's Court Packing Plan discussed above). Congress could pass legislation that restricts the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and other federal courts over certain topics and cases: this is suggested by language in Section 2 of Article Three, where the appellate jurisdiction is granted "with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." The Court sanctioned such congressional action in the Reconstruction case ex parte McCardle (1869), though it rejected Congress' power to dictate how particular cases must be decided in United States v. Klein (1871).

On the other hand, through its power of judicial review, the Supreme Court has defined the scope and nature of the powers and separation between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government; for example, in United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp. (1936), Dames & Moore v. Regan (1981), and notably in Goldwater v. Carter (1979), (where it effectively gave the Presidency the power to terminate ratified treaties without the consent of Congress or the Senate). The Court's decisions can also confine the presidency, as in Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935), the Steel Seizure Case (1952), and United States v. Nixon (1974).

Criticisms

Judicial activism is the charge that judges are going beyond their powers and are making (instead of interpreting) the law. It is the antithesis of judicial restraint. Judicial activism is not restricted to any particular ideological or political point of view. American history has included periods in which the Supreme Court was accused of conservative judicial activism, and also of liberal activism.^[37]

Howard Zinn presents the idea that the overall history of the Court, especially during the period between the Civil War and the Great Depression, should be viewed as one of mostly conservative activism in the defense of property rights. The case most often invoked as an example of conservative judicial activism is Lochner v. New York, a 1905 case that invalidated a New York law regulating the hours bakers could work as a violation of liberty of contract, a part of the doctrine of Substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.^[37] This decision elevated the concept of "liberty of contract" to a dogmatic stance of the Court for over thirty years.

On the other hand, starting primarily with the Supreme Court's 1961 decision in Mapp v. Ohio, which established the exclusionary rule in state criminal proceedings, many conservatives have portrayed the Supreme Court as a haven for liberal judicial activism. This has especially been the case since the advent of the Warren Court and the revolution in civil liberties, but the charge has continued to the Burger Court and even into the Rehnquist Court. The argument is that in the name of expanding the "rights" a majority of justices find agreeable, the Court is twisting the Constitution by disregarding the original meaning of the due process and equal protections clauses in order to reach a desired result. One case which is often invoked by critics as an example of liberal activism is Roe v. Wade in 1973, where the Court struck down restrictive abortion laws as violating the "right to privacy" that the Court had previously found inherent in the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.^[37]

According to Zinn, however, of the 20th century Courts only the Stone, Vinson, Warren, and to a lesser extent the Burger Courts (a time frame ranging approximately from 1941 to 1986) could be seen as leaning more toward a liberal interpretation of the Constitution and its guarantees, but not in every opinion.^[38]

Liberal and conservative activism are both, at least as perceived by their opponents, abandoning the literal words of the Constitution in pursuit of what the Supreme Court considers to be the just or right or reasonable course of action. A campaign against judicial activism has been part of presidencies of many diverse ideological viewpoints, such as those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.

In 1988 President Ronald Reagan lectured a convention of attorneys about, “…courts that played fast and loose with the instrument the founding fathers devised. Yes, some law professors and judges said the courts should save the country from the Constitution. We said it was time to save the Constitution from them.”^[39]

President Abraham Lincoln (referring to the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision) warned:

If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. (Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, 1861).

In Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges (2003), Judge Robert Bork, argues:

What judges have wrought is a coup d'état, – slow-moving and genteel, but a coup d'état nonetheless…. The nations of the West are increasingly governed not by law or elected representatives, but by unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable committees of lawyers applying no law other than their own will.^[40]

In recent years, the term "judicial usurpation" has been used by many to describe what they consider to be aggressive judicial activism. During the two years following the publication of Bork's book, at least five books appeared on the subject of judicial usurpation.^[41] In 2005, Pat Buchanan chronicled what he believed to be the Court's transgressions:

The Brown decision of 1954, desegregating the schools of 17 states and the District of Columbia, awakened the nation to the court's new claim to power. Hailed by liberal elites – and finding no resistance from a Democratic Congress or President who spent his afternoons at Burning Tree – Warren's court went off on a rampage. It invented new rights for criminals and put new restrictions on cops and prosecutors. It reassigned students to schools by race and ordered busing to bring it about, tearing cities apart. It ordered God, prayer and Bible-reading out of classrooms. It said pornography was constitutionally protected, making Larry Flynt and Al Goldstein First Amendment heroes, rather than felons. It ruled naked dancing a protected form of free expression. It declared abortion a constitutional right and sodomy constitutionally protected behavior. It outlawed the death penalty, abolished term limits on members of Congress voted by state referendums, and told high school coaches to stop praying in locker rooms and students to stop saying prayers at graduation. It ordered the Ten Commandments out of schoolhouses and courthouses. It condoned discrimination against white students in violation of the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. And, two weeks ago, in a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that towns can seize private homes and turn them over to private developers.^[42]

Visiting the Court

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The United States Supreme Court building is open to the public from 9 am to 4:30 pm, Monday through Friday. The Court is closed on Saturdays, Sundays and United States federal holidays. The Supreme Court building is located at 1 First Street NE in Washington D.C directly across from the east entrance (opposite side from the Mall) of the United States Capitol. When the court is in session, visitors are seated in the gallery on a first come, first served basis. Specifically, at around 7:30, visitors present on the plaza are given a numbered card from 1 to approximately 100. These cards are not tickets but rather place holders in the line to witness the entire first oral argument. With a place holder ticket, visitors can leave, but must return and form a line, according to their number, by 8:45. These guests are admitted to the court at 9. After watching the first argument, these visitors have the option of either leaving or staying to watch the second oral argument, which occurs directly after the first argument. The first case starts at 10 and the second at 11. Visitors present on the plaza who do not have cards, the vast majority of the crowd, are waiting in line to either have a chance at observing the entire second case or for a spot in a second line (which forms after the ticket holders enter) to watch a five-minute segment of either case. Visitors should note that exact number of public seats can vary from case to case. As a general rule, visitors wishing to fully observe both arguments should plan to arrive at the court by 7am, but for extremely important cases, visitors often arrive the day before and wait throughout the night on the sidewalk. Throughout this process, officers of the Supreme Court Police are on hand to answer questions. Upon entering the building, visitors must pass through two metal detectors and place most belongings (hats, coats. etc) in coin-operated lockers. A policy of absolute silence, no photography, and proper decorum is strictly enforced during the arguments. All present in the courtroom should rise when the justices enter the courtroom.

See also

Federal judicial appointment history List of United States Chief Justices by time in office List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by court composition by education by seat by time in office by session

Lists of United States Supreme Court cases List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States List of law schools by United States Supreme Court Justices trained Oyez.org Segal-Cover score United States Reports Unsuccessful nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States Supreme Court Historical Society Supreme Court Litigation Solosez, an electronic mailing list sponsored and hosted by the American Bar Association

Notes

1. ^ "U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 1". http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article03/. Retrieved on 2007-09-21. 
2. ^ See, in dicta Northern Pipeline Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U.S. 50, 59 (1982); United States ex rel. Toth v. Quarles, 350 U.S. 11, 16 (1955).
3. ^ "A Brief Overview of the Supreme Court" (PDF). United States Supreme Court. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/about/briefoverview.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-09-21. 
4. ^ Ashmore, Anne (August 2006). "Dates of Supreme Court decisions and arguments, United States Reports volumes 2-107 (1791–1882)" (PDF). Library, Supreme Court of the United States. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/datesofdecisions.pdf. Retrieved on 2009-04-26. 
5. ^ History of the Court, in Hall, Ely Jr., Grossman, and Wiecek (eds) The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-19-505835-6
6. ^ In Steps Big and Small, Supreme Court Moved Right by Linda Greenhouse, New York Times, July 1, 2007
7. ^ 16 Stat. 44
8. ^ Hodak, George (2007). "February 5, 1937: FDR Unveils Court Packing Plan". ABAjournal.com. American Bar Association. http://abajournal.com/magazine/february_5_1937/. Retrieved on 2009-01-29. 
9. ^ Justices, Number of. in Hall, Ely Jr., Grossman, and Wiecek (editors), The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. Oxford University Press 1992, ISBN 0-19-505935-6
10. ^ Todd S., Purdum (July 5, 2005). "Presidents, Picking Justices, Can Have Backfires". Courts in Transition: Nominees and History (New York Times): p. A4. 
11. ^ "United States Senate. "Nominations"". http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Nominations.htm. 
12. ^ Balkin, Jack M.. "The passionate intensity of the confirmation process". Jurist. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/symposium-jc/balkin.php. Retrieved on 2008-02-13. 
13. ^ David N. Atkinson, Leaving the Bench (University Press of Kansas 1999)ISBN 0-7006-0946-6
14. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/us/politics/27court.html?hp Retrieved 2009-5-26
15. ^ ""Sotomayor would be part of court's Catholic shift"". CNNPolitics.com. CNN. 2009-05-27. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/27/sotomayor.catholic/. Retrieved on 2009-05-27. 
16. ^ ""Sotomayor would be sixth Catholic justice"". Articles of Faith. boston.com. 2009-05-26. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2009/05/sotomayor_would.html. Retrieved on 2009-05-27. 
17. ^ See for example Sandra Day O'Connor:How the first woman on the Supreme Court became its most influential justice, by Joan Biskupic and Sandra Day O'Connor, Harper Collins, 2005, p. 105. Also Rokie on the Bench: The Role of the Junior Justice by Clare Cushman, Journal of Supreme Court History 32 no. 3 (2008), pp. 282-296.
18. ^ "Breyer Just Missed Record as Junior Justice". http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1199873130560. Retrieved on 2008-01-11. 
19. ^ "U.S. Supreme Court Justices". http://usgovinfo.about.com/blctjustices.htm. Retrieved on 2008-04-24. 
20. ^ In a 2007 interview, Justice Stevens stated he considers himself a "judicial conservative", and only appears liberal because he has been surrounded by increasingly conservative colleagues.""The Dissenter"". The Times Magazine. New York Times. 2007-09-23. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/magazine/23stevens-t.html. Retrieved on 2008-02-14. 
21. ^ Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, Doubleday, 2007 ISBN 0-385-51640-1
22. ^ Lane (2006-01-31). "Kennedy Seen as The Next Justice In Court's Middle". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/30/AR2006013001356.html?nav=hcmodule. 
23. ^ The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
24. ^ Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (Scalia, J., dissenting)
25. ^ "Supreme Court orders" (PDF). 2009-06-29. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/orders/courtorders/062909zr.pdf. Retrieved on 2009-07-01. 
26. ^ 28 U.S.C. § 1254
27. ^ 28 U.S.C. § 1257; see also Adequate and independent state grounds
28. ^ 28 U.S.C. § 1872 See Georgia v. Brailsford, 3 U.S. 1 (1794), in which the Court conducted a jury trial.
29. ^ Tony Mauro (2005-10-21). "Roberts Dips Toe Into Cert Pool". Legal Times. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1129799113829. Retrieved on 2007-10-31. 
30. ^ Tony Mauro (2006-07-04). "Justice Alito Joins Cert Pool Party". Legal Times. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1144330162287. Retrieved on 2007-10-31. 
31. ^ Adam Liptak (2008-09-25). "A Second Justice Opts Out of a Longtime Custom: The 'Cert. Pool'". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/washington/26memo.html?ex=1380168000&en=d58acbfb583fd4f2&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink. Retrieved on 2008-10-17. 
32. ^ See generally, Tushnet, Mark, ed. (2008) I Dissent: Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases, Malaysia: Beacon Press, pp. 256, ISBN 978-080700036-6
33. ^ ^{a b} 28 U.S.C. § 1
34. ^ The American Conflict by Horace Greeley (1873), p. 106; also in The Life of Andrew Jackson (2001) by Robert Vincent Remini
35. ^ Mendelson, Wallace (1992), "Separation of Powers", in Hall, Kermit L., The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, Oxford University Press, pp. 775, ISBN 0195058356 
36. ^ Vile, John R. (1992), "Court curbing", in Hall, Kermit L., The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, Oxford University Press, pp. 202, ISBN 0195058356 
37. ^ ^{a b c} See for example Judicial activism in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, edited by Kermit Hall; article written by Gary McDowell
38. ^ Irons, Peter. A People's History of the Supreme Court. London: Penguin, 1999. ISBN 0670870064
39. ^ Special keynote address by President Ronald Reagan, November 1988, at the second annual lawyers convention of the Federalist Society, Washington, D.C.
40. ^ Robert Bork, Coercing Virtue, The Worldwide Rule of Judges (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 2003), pp. 9, 13
41. ^ Judge Andrew Napolitano, Constitutional Chaos : What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws (Nashville TN: Nelson Current, 2004); Phyllis Schlafly, The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It (Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing Company, 2004); Mark R. Levin, Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishers, 2005); Judge Roy Moore with John Perry, So Help Me God: The Ten Commandments, Judicial Tyranny, And The Battle For Religious Freedom (Nashville TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005); Mark Sutherland, et. al.., Judicial Tyranny: the new kings of America (St. Louis, MO: Amerisearch , 2005)
42. ^ Patrick J. Buchanan, “The Judges War: an Issue of Power,” Townhall.com, July 6, 2005

References

• The Rules of the Supreme Court of the United States (2005 ed.) (pdf).
• Biskupic, Joan and Elder Witt. (1997). Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly. ISBN 1-56802-130-5
• Hall, Kermit L., ed (1992). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195058356. 
• Harvard Law Review Assn., (2000). The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 17th ed. [18th ed., 2005. 13-ISBN 978-6-0001-4329-9]
• Irons, Peter. (1999). A People's History of the Supreme Court. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-87006-4.
• Rehnquist, William. (1987). The Supreme Court. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40943-2.
• Skifos, Catherine Hetos. (1976)."The Supreme Court Gets a Home", Supreme Court Historical Society 1976 Yearbook. [in 1990, re-named The Journal of Supreme Court History (ISSN 1059-4329)]
• Warren, Charles. (1924). The Supreme Court in United States History. (3 volumes). Boston: Little, Brown and Co.
• Woodward, Bob and Armstrong, Scott. The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (1979). ISBN 978-0743274029.
• Supreme Court Historical Society. "The Court Building" (PDF). http://www.supremecourtus.gov/about/courtbuilding.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-02-13. 

Further reading

• Abraham, Henry J. (1992). Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506557-3. 
• Beard, Charles A. (1912). The Supreme Court and the Constitution. New York: Macmillan Company. Reprinted Dover Publications, 2006. ISBN 0-486-44779-0.
• Cushman, Barry. (1998). Rethinking the New Deal Court. Oxford University Press.
• Cushman, Clare (2001). The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.). (Supreme Court Historical Society, Congressional Quarterly Books). ISBN 9781568021263.. 
• Frank, John P. (1995). Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L.. eds. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 9781568021263. 
• Garner, Bryan A. (2004). Black's Law Dictionary. Deluxe 8th ed. Thomson West. ISBN 0-314-15199-0.
• Greenburg, Jan Crawford, Jan. (2007). Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control for the United States Supreme Court. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 978-1-59420-101-1.
• Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 0871875543. 
• McCloskey, Robert G. (2005). The American Supreme Court. 4th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-55682-4.
• O'Brien, David M. (2008). Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics (8th ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393932184. 
• Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. Doubleday, 2007. ISBN 0-385-51640-1.
• Urofsky, Melvin and Finkelman, Paul. (2001). A March of Liberty: A Constitutional History of the United States. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512637-8 & ISBN 0-19-512635-1.
• Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 590. ISBN 0815311761.. 
• Supreme Court Historical Society. "The Court Building" (PDF). http://www.supremecourtus.gov/about/courtbuilding.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-02-13. 

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