The Supreme Court

Summary:

During the first half of the video about The Supreme Court of the United States the documentary stated that The Supreme Court is the most powerful judicial body on Earth. Their cases range from prisoners being wrongly convicted to a president defending his own power. There are only 9 justices (members) on The Supreme Court.

The first video on The Supreme Court gives a list of facts about the history of The Supreme Court. One fact that was mentioned was that there has only been over 100 justices on The Supreme Court throughout the history of America. Justices on the Supreme Court are elected by a President of the United States.

In 1801 the Supreme Court, under Chief John Marshall, struck down an act of congress (Marbury v. Madison) as unconstitutional for the first time.The next major Supreme Court decision that was made occurred during the case of Dredd Scott when the Supreme Court declared that congress had no power to ban slavery and that blacks could never be citizens.

Often the Supreme Court receives thousands of letters to attempting to prove a ruling as wrong. Only a handful of these cases are taken to The Supreme Court. The Supreme Court accepts these cases to see if the law was constitutional and to see if the decision was truly just.

The second video discusses the process of a case going through The Supreme Court. The video focuses on how lawyers of each side argue their point and the difficulties of arguing in The Supreme Court. After the argument is complete an opinion writing is written to make the decision of the court known.

My Opinion:

I found this short film quite interesting since it showed the history, progress, and current Supreme Court. The documentary was short and didn't focus on certain topics for too long which allowed me to keep interest in what was going on. Prior to watching this video I knew very little about the Supreme Court. I knew that they dealt with some cases that had unsatisfactory outcomes, I knew that they were the highest court of law, and I also knew they had the power to deem certain acts as unconstitutional. However, I did not know the process that took place, such as opinion writing, for a decision to be made in The Supreme Court.