Blog #2: SCOTUS History

  

          

    Coming into the beginning of this class, I honestly didn't have too much knowledge of the Supreme Court other than that it was the highest federal court in the nation. After reading the article about the Supreme Court by the History.com Editors, I now have a lot of new information about the Supreme Court and how it works. 

    Before reading the article on the Supreme Court, I had no idea that the chief justice was responsible for presiding over the whole entire Supreme Court. To me, this seems like a really big job, and although I know a lot of work and thought goes into choosing a chief justice, it still seems like a decision that seems impossible to make. I also learned that the chief justice presides over the trials of impeachments of the President of the United States. 

    I believe the most important take-away from the Supreme Court is all of the court cases that they have made decisions for that have become really famous in our country. For instance, in 1857 the Supreme Court made the decision to not let African Americans have U.S. citizenship in the Dred Scott v. Sanford case, and allowed state segregation laws to be upheld in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. Since then, these have been cases that have made history in the United States (even if it was a negative change). This and so many more famous cases show that clearly, the Supreme Court has the power to make history, positive or negative, within our country that will last for centuries to come. 

    The most surprising thing I learned about the Supreme Court is that there are no term limits for Supreme Court justices. Since every other political figure basically does have a term limit, it's weird that they don't have a term limit.

           

     The video changed the way that I thought about the Supreme Court in the way I have admiration for all the justices. I didn't realize they serve their term for life, and they also have a really difficult and tiring job. Sometimes they may be overlooked, since the president is the face of our country, but they do deserve a lot of credit for doing their job.

https://www.history.com/topics/us-government/supreme-court-facts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWRoXYRsaeo 

By Rebecca Bonilla