Enjoy patriotic music fit for an epic! What is Judicial Review?
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The Court and Democracy
Read the article by Jeffery Rosen:
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The United States of America has been shaped with all types of legislation that has been passed and how the citizens of the nation receives these new laws. Judicial Review is important because there are many laws that are very controversial and people feel like they need to protect their rights from these laws. When someone uses that law against another, one might take the other to court. Sometimes, people take their problems all the way to the Supreme Court and have the court decide whether or not the law is the central point of the problem and if the law is constitutional. "Yale legal scholar Alexander Bickel wrote in the 1960s that the Court was a 'deviant institution in American democracy' because whenever it strikes down a law, 'it exercises control, not in behalf of the prevailing majority, but against it.'" (Rosen) The Supreme Court's job is not to decide what is morally right or to ensure the happiness of any one person; it is to decide why a law may or may not be in agreement with the Constitution. Some might even say that this is what government in it's purest form should be. People live by the Constitution in the United States of America and they expect their government to uphold their laws which are used to keep the citizen's rights in place. "Hamilton also rejected the idea that the Supreme Court was inherently anti-democratic: when it struck down federal and state laws in the name of the fundamental constitutional principles, the Court would serve democracy, because the Constitution represented the will of the people, while federal and state laws merely represented the will of the people's temporary and fallible representatives." (Rosen) People often change their minds on certain ideas. With justices entitled to their position for life, they are expected to think about the future of the country and how certain laws interact with the Constitution. Although it is not a Judicial Review case, a good example of people changing their minds about what they want is shown with the eighteenth and twenty-first amendment. When Congress first voted on the prohibition of alcohol (1917) the law had passed with a forty-seven to eight vote. In 1933, Congress voted and passed the twenty-first amendment by fulfilling the three-quarters vote and the prohibition was lifted. Point being that people think they know what they want, but the justices are trusted to hold all laws to the U.S. Constitution. "Jefferson also tried to use his power to appoint new justices to change the direction of the Court, but he largely failed: all three of his nominees were moderate Republicans who succumbed, in varying degrees, to Marshall's personal charm and who ultimately embraced his vision of judicial independence and broad national power." (Rosen) There have been presidents who tried to add more Justices to the Supreme Court because they want to appoint Justices who would allow the laws that they wanted to pass. Justices are appointed and approved by the executive and the legislative branch so that there is a good mix of people with different views in certain areas that can lead the court to a good decision. However, some politicians have tried to abuse their power to sway the court in one direction over the other. This is where the Separation of Powers comes in and keeps the government in balance. Justices have a big job and are expected to make sure the new laws created are in accordance with the Constitution.
Judicial Review
Read the article by D. R. Tarr & A. O'Connor |
A lot of the attention that the Judicial Branch gets today is about the cases currently under Judicial Review. Most people would not know all the cases that were being disputed in the everyday court in Washington D.C., however, the Judicial Review is very important to shaping today's United States of America. “The congressional statutes invalidated have included many relatively minor laws, but also such major enactments as the Missouri Compromise, child labor laws, New Deal economic recovery acts, the post-Watergate campaign finance law, efforts to allow victims of gender-motivated violence to sue their attackers in federal court for compensatory damages, and amendments to a landmark age discrimination law.” (Tarr & O'Connor) These larger cases are the ones that mostly everyone in the nation hears about a day or two after they have been finished. Some of the country celebrates these decisions and other groups or parts of the country disapprove of the changes that would take place later. Since Judicial Review has been established (1803 with Marbury v. Madison) there have only been about 150 cases of Judicial Review. Many laws may be needed in certain areas all over the country, but they can also be unnecessary and restraining in all the other areas. "as Congress broadened the scope of federal regulation in the late nineteenth century, the number of federal laws declared unconstitutional increased.” (Tarr & O'Connor) The needs of each state in the country are different and to have one law to rule all of them would harm the culture of another state. With federal power increasing, this means that the states have less power over their own laws. Judicial Review allows the justices to decide if a law was made for the correct reasons and does not interfere with the rights of the people whom the law has angered. “The Constitution makes no mention of judicial review, but the framers seem to have intended that the Supreme Court would have the power to determine whether acts of Congress conformed to its provisions.” (Tarr & O'Connor) The first use of Judicial Review was in 1803 in the famous case Marbury v. Madison in which the Supreme Court asserted it's ability to limit Congressional power. Judicial Review may not be directly talked about in the Constitution, but in a way, it is one way of using the system of checks and balances. Judicial review has been used to make sure that the legislative branch would not create laws that were against the rights of U.S. citizens. The Constitution was written so that it could be added to and the government could change with it's people, and Judicial Review is one of these adaptions.
Besides being impeached (by the same process any other politician would be), Justices of the Supreme Court serve for life.
Judicial Review Impact
Read the article by Stephen Haas
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