The United States Supreme Court has always been an enigma to me, and this reading (History Channel) and videos (Youtube : Part 1) (Youtube : Part 2) helped clarify some questions I had. I did not know that the nine justices (and the number has not always been nine throughout American history) are appointed for life and there is no retirement age. Most justices serve until they die (Scalia, Bader Ginsburg) and the justice alone determines when they are too old or sick to continue working. There is a cumbersome process to try to impeach and remove a justice who is might be senile (William O. Douglas) but it has not been tried successfully. The Supreme Court also sets its own conflict of interest rules, so an individual justice decides when they have a conflict of interest and should recuse themselves and that is not subject to oversight (not a good thing). The Court also sets its own internal operational rules and the only oversight is that Congress can reduce their budget as a penalty!
Only 115 people have served as justices throughout the (almost) 250-year history of our nation-I was shocked how low that number of justices was. I was aware of the grueling and political confirmation process, where each prospective justice says they have not formed an opinion about hot button issues of the day like abortion or immigration and can be open minded (despite being among the most highly educated persons in the entire country) and yet as soon as they are confirmed they vote the way their supporters knew they would and their opponents seem surprised! The confirmation process has not worked well for the nation for the past thirty years. The fact that the process is so political now has hurt the credibility of the Court and has lowered the public’s level of respect for the Court.
Three interesting things I learned from the history were that the Court had no real power for its first twenty years of existence until Chief Justice John Marshall’s decision in Marbury v. Madison (1803). Secondly, I did not know that the Justices “rode circuit”, meaning that they held court all over the country, until 1891-which would have been a terribly grueling workload when it was horse and buggy. Finally, only William Howard Taft has been both the President of the United States and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and that feat is not likely to be repeated!
As an equal third branch of government, the Court’s decisions cannot be overturned by another branch (although the court has, on occasion, changed its own decisions-like on racial segregation or gay marriage). Some of its decisions, like Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and Roe v. Wade (1973) have literally changed American life forever by the “stroke of a pen”. Especially in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, only the Supreme Court was free enough from politics to begin the process of desegregation-which came one hundred years too late, but at least it started-in the Supreme Court.
What incredible power-for life-these nine men and women have, to shape the country and our lives for better or worse!
