Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party". In 1803, the court asserted itself the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law.
Under Article Three of the United States Constitution, the composition and procedures of the Supreme Court were originally established by the 1st Congress through the Judiciary Act of 1789. The court consists of nine justicesthe chief justice of the United States and eight associate justiceswho meet at the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. Justices have lifetime tenure, meaning they remain on the court until they die, retire, resign, or are impeached and removed from office. When a vacancy occurs, the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoints a new justice.
Each justice has a single vote in deciding the cases argued before the court. When in the majority, the chief justice decides who writes the opinion of the court; otherwise, the most senior justice in the majority assigns the task. A justice may write an opinion in concurrence with the court, or they may write a dissent, and these concurrences or dissents may also be joined by other justices. On average, the Supreme Court receives about 7,000 petitions for writs of certiorari each year, but only grants about 80.
History
In 1787, four years after the end of the American Revolutionary War, delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia, where they debated the separation of powers between the legislative and executive departments and established parameters for a national judiciary as a third branch of the federal government. In the British tradition, judicial matters had been the responsibility of the royal authority. During the Constitutional Convention, delegates opposed to having a strong central government argued that national laws could be enforced by state courts. James Madison and others, advocated for a national judicial authority chosen by the national legislature. It was proposed that the judiciary should have a role in checking executive branch power to veto or revise laws.The framers ultimately compromised by sketching only a general outline of the judiciary in Article Three of the United States Constitution, vesting federal judicial power in "one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." They did not delineate the exact powers or prerogatives of the Supreme Court or determine how the judicial branch should be organized.
The 1st United States Congress provided the detailed organization of a federal judiciary through the Judiciary Act of 1789. They decided that the Supreme Court, as the country's highest judicial tribunal, would be based in the nation's capital and would be composed of a chief justice and five associate justices. The act also divided the country into judicial districts, which were in turn organized into circuits. Justices were required to hold circuit court twice a year in their assigned judicial district.
Immediately after signing the act into law, President George Washington nominated John Jay as the court's new chief justice, and John Rutledge, William Cushing, Robert H. Harrison, James Wilson and John Blair Jr. as its associate justices. All six were confirmed by the U.S. Senate on September 26, 1789. Harrison declined to serve, and Washington later nominated James Iredell to replace him.
The Supreme Court held its inaugural session from February 2 through February 10, 1790, at the Royal Exchange in New York City, then the U.S. capital. A second session was held there in August 1790. The earliest sessions of the court were devoted to organizational proceedings, as the first cases did not reach it until 1791. When the nation's capital was moved to Philadelphia in 1790, the Supreme Court moved to Philadelphia with it. After initially meeting in present-day Independence Hall, the court established its chambers at city hall. When the capital moved to Washington, D.C., the court was held in the U.S. Capitol Building until 1935 when it moved to its own building.
Early beginnings
Under chief justices Jay, Rutledge, and Ellsworth, the court heard few cases; its first decision was West v. Barnes, a case involving procedure. As the court initially had only six members, every decision that it made by a majority was also made by two-thirds. However, Congress has always allowed less than the court's full membership to make decisions, starting with a quorum of four justices in 1789. The court lacked a home of its own and had little prestige, a situation not helped by the era's highest-profile case, Chisholm v. Georgia, which was reversed within two years by the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment.The court's power and prestige grew substantially during the Marshall Court. Under Marshall, the court established the power of judicial review over acts of Congress, including specifying itself as the supreme expositor of the Constitution and making several important constitutional rulings that gave shape and substance to the balance of power between the federal government and states, notably Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, McCulloch v. Maryland, and Gibbons v. Ogden.
The Marshall Court also ended the practice of each justice issuing his opinion seriatim, a remnant of British tradition, and instead issuing a single majority opinion. Also during Marshall's tenure, although beyond the court's control, the impeachment and acquittal of Justice Samuel Chase from 1804 to 1805 helped cement the principle of judicial independence.
From Taney to Taft
The Taney Court 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. Nevertheless, it is primarily remembered for its ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which helped precipitate the American Civil War. In the Reconstruction era, the Chase, Waite, and Fuller Courts interpreted the new Civil War amendments to the Constitution and developed the doctrine of substantive due process. The size of the court was last changed in 1869, when it was set at nine.Under the White and Taft Courts, the court held that the Fourteenth Amendment had incorporated some guarantees of the Bill of Rights against the states, grappled with the new antitrust statutes, upheld the constitutionality of military conscription, and brought the substantive due process doctrine to its first apogee.
New Deal era
During the Hughes, Stone, and Vinson courts, the court gained its own accommodation in 1935 and changed its interpretation of the Constitution, giving a broader reading to the powers of the federal government to facilitate President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. During World War II, the court continued to favor government power, upholding the internment of Japanese Americans and the mandatory Pledge of Allegiance. Nevertheless, Gobitis was soon repudiated, and the Steel Seizure Case restricted the pro-government trend.The Warren Court dramatically expanded the force of Constitutional civil liberties. It held that segregation in public schools violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that legislative districts must be roughly equal in population. It recognized a general right to privacy, limited the role of religion in public school, most prominently Engel v. Vitale and Abington School District v. Schempp, incorporated most guarantees of the Bill of Rights against the states, prominently Mapp v. Ohio and Gideon v. Wainwright, and required that criminal suspects be apprised of all these rights by police. At the same time, the court limited defamation suits by public figures and supplied the government with an unbroken run of antitrust victories.
Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts
The Burger Court saw a conservative shift. It also expanded Griswolds right to privacy to strike down abortion laws but divided deeply on affirmative action and campaign finance regulation. It also wavered on the death penalty, ruling first that most applications were defective, but later that the death penalty itself was not unconstitutional.The Rehnquist Court was known for its revival of judicial enforcement of federalism, emphasizing the limits of the Constitution's affirmative grants of power and the force of its restrictions on those powers. It struck down single-sex state schools as a violation of equal protection, laws against sodomy as violations of substantive due process and the line-item veto but upheld school vouchers and reaffirmed Roes restrictions on abortion laws. The court's decision in Bush v. Gore, which ended the electoral recount during the 2000 United States presidential election, remains especially [|controversial] with debate ongoing over the rightful winner and whether or not the ruling should set a precedent.
The Roberts Court is regarded as more conservative and controversial than the Rehnquist Court. Some of its major rulings have concerned federal preemption, civil procedure, voting rights and federal preclearance, abortion, climate change, same-sex marriage, and the Bill of Rights, such as in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Heller–McDonald–Bruen, and Baze v. Rees.