History and Workings of the Supreme Court

Today, we view the Supreme Court as a fair and just court, however, the road to this faith in the court was not that easy.

After the Constitution was ratified, the government moved to Washington in 1801. The Supreme Court arrived at an unfinished capital with a temporary workspace. They were not seen as equal to the other branches of government.

The fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, was the first one to strike down the act of congress as unconstitutional in Marbury v. Madison. He earned the court's respect as a co-equal branch of government. This changed the way the court was viewed in the publics' eyes and in the other two branches of government's eyes.

This faith and respect in the court lasted about 50 years until Dread Scott claimed freedom under an act of Congress in the case of Scott v. Sandford. Roger Brooke Tany was the Chief Justice at the time, and under his court, they ruled that Congress had no power to ban slavery and that black people could never be citizens. This decision ultimately weakened the court's authority, which was a bit surprising to me at first. I know the country was very divided at the time, but I am shocked that people actually displayed their genuine reactions of disgust when it came to slavery, especially during this time. I just feel like people were even more scared to have a conversation about racism and especially with slavery going on, that it surprises me people were in open opposition to it.

Eventually, this issue was resolved by the civil war, and the constitution was amended to abolish slavery. I wonder what our country would have looked like if the Supreme Court had decided differently back then.

As I stated early, the court is now respected amongst many today. But how did we get here? Well, many of today's justice's say they have very specific ways of going about cases, but they have respect for each other and for the law and they take that all into consideration when picking cases and when making a decision.

I think one of the most note-worthy things about today's justices is that they take any case from any person regardless of background, sex, race, and situation/crime. This might be the reason for the respect we see today for the court.

Once justices come to a decision, they write an opinion that usually takes about four weeks. Once the opinion is released, it is given to the press to become public knowledge. It's interesting to think about how they might have handled this back in the 1800s. They wrote in newspapers and then wrote to their friends in other states and word eventually traveled, but that probably took months. Nowadays, once an opinion is released it is readily available for anyone in the world within minutes.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court has of course gotten more technically savvy, but they have also learned from their previous mistakes to be fair and just when it comes to enacting the law.