Blog Post#2 The Supreme Court

The history of the Supreme Court is incredibly interesting. It is also one of, if not the most influential branch of the United States. The Supreme Court has powers that maybe no other court in the world has, and that is Judicial Review: The power of the court to review all actions by all departments of government and deem them constitutional or not. Judicial Review was established in Marbury v. Madison, in which Chief Justice John Marshal gave the Supreme Court the power to interpret The Constitution by setting the precedent which said that (the Supreme Court) it could.  

The most surprising things I learned from reading the article on the Supreme Court must be that: Chief Justice John Marshal served as the Chief Justice for over thirty-four years, and that in the Supreme Court's first term, it did not hear a single case.

Things I did not know that I found to also be interesting were that these justices were required to hold circuit court twice a year in each judicial circuit. This went on for about a hundred years. 

What I think is really incredible is that in my opinion, the Supreme Court has done more for the American people in giving and protecting rights than Congress has done in the last one hundred years. Whether flawed rulings or not, the court through Roe v. Wade, Texas v. Johnson, Gideon v. Wainwright and many many others has passed down rulings that afford Americans protections that they otherwise would never have had.