Essay On Supreme Court

The supreme court is one of the main pillars of government, whose original job was to rule over cases from original jurisdiction to appellate. However the court took on a very important power early on in it’s life, this power was the power to declare laws unconstitutional or judicial review. This power allows the court to govern to a limited extent their word essentially becoming law. This may be seen as some as a bad thing, however in all reality it may be a necessity. The supreme court acts similar to a watchdog in many cases. The power of judicial review combined with the fact that it 's the highest court means that its decision is essentially law. However it does change. The court is also unique in that it isn’t elected by the people. This means that the court may not always fall in opinion with the people. This is where the primary problem comes from. One side says that the life terms allows for impartial ruling however problems do arise when you consider generational shifts. Problems also arise with …show more content…
This in theory could cause problems, however this isn’t really the case the average term of a supreme court justice is only about 16 years(supreme court gov site). Granted the longest term was almost 37 however the shortest was a temporary chief justice who served a little over 5 months(supreme court). The more interesting part is that there are no actual requirements in the constitution to serve on the court(history.com). The court’s members where intended to be “men of wisdom”(class) not bound to the president or any political party. They where to act in the best interest of the nation. The nation not people mind you, infact the court 's opinion on issues change as it does a prime example being the “separate but equal” decision. It makes sense that the court changes with time. The question of this paper is whether or not they should be left to voters or the president to decide the