Supreme Court of the United States
Based on Wikipedia: Supreme Court of the United States
Nine Unelected Lawyers Who Shape American Life
Here's a striking fact: nine people you never voted for hold more power over your daily life than almost anyone you did vote for. They serve for life. They answer to no one. And their decisions—on everything from abortion to gun rights to who becomes president—are final.
This is the Supreme Court of the United States, often abbreviated SCOTUS. It sits at the apex of the American legal system, the court of last resort, the place where constitutional questions go to be settled. Or at least, that's the theory.
The reality is far messier and far more fascinating.
What the Supreme Court Actually Does
The Supreme Court has two main jobs. First, it serves as the final court of appeals for the entire federal court system and for any state court case that involves federal law or the Constitution. If you lose in a lower court and you think the Constitution is on your side, the Supreme Court is your last hope.
Second—and this is crucial—the Court has claimed for itself the power of judicial review. This means it can strike down any law passed by Congress, any regulation issued by a federal agency, and any executive order signed by the president, if the Court decides that action violates the Constitution.
The Constitution itself never explicitly grants this power. The Court simply asserted it in 1803, in a case called Marbury versus Madison, and everyone went along with it. This was one of the most consequential power grabs in American history, and it happened without anyone firing a shot or passing a law.
The Court also has what's called "original jurisdiction" over a narrow category of cases—disputes between states, cases involving ambassadors, and a few other rarities. These cases start at the Supreme Court rather than working their way up from lower courts.
The Numbers Game
Every year, roughly seven thousand people ask the Supreme Court to hear their cases. The Court agrees to hear about eighty. That's just over one percent.
The petition you file asking the Court to hear your case is called a writ of certiorari—Latin for "to be made certain." If at least four of the nine justices vote to hear your case, the Court grants "cert." If not, the lower court's decision stands, and your legal journey ends.
This means the Court exercises enormous discretion over which questions it will answer. A case might raise the most pressing constitutional issue of the day, but if the justices don't feel like addressing it, they simply won't. The refusal to hear a case isn't technically a ruling on the merits, but it has the practical effect of letting lower court decisions stand as the final word.
A Constitution Sketched in Pencil
The Founders were remarkably vague about the Supreme Court. Article Three of the Constitution—the section dealing with the judiciary—is the shortest of the three articles establishing the branches of government. It simply says that judicial power shall be vested in "one supreme Court" and whatever lower courts Congress creates. That's about it.
The Constitution doesn't say how many justices should sit on the Court. It doesn't specify their qualifications. It doesn't detail the Court's procedures. It doesn't even clearly establish judicial review. The Founders left these questions for future generations to work out.
This vagueness wasn't an oversight. During the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, the delegates couldn't agree on the judiciary's role. Some wanted judges to have a say in vetoing legislation alongside the president. Others worried about giving unelected judges too much power. Some thought state courts could handle enforcing federal law without any national judiciary at all.
James Madison—the primary architect of the Constitution—wanted a strong national judiciary selected by Congress. His opponents wanted judges kept far from the levers of federal power. They compromised by punting the details to the first Congress.
Congress Builds a Court
The Judiciary Act of 1789, passed by the First Congress, filled in the constitutional blanks. It established a Supreme Court with six members—a chief justice and five associate justices. It created lower federal courts organized into districts and circuits. And it required the Supreme Court justices to spend part of their year traveling around the country, literally riding circuit to hear cases in different regions.
This circuit-riding requirement was brutal. Early justices spent months each year on horseback or in carriages, traveling rough roads to distant courthouses. Several complained bitterly about the physical toll. It wasn't abolished until 1891.
President George Washington nominated all six original justices on the same day in 1789. John Jay of New York became the first Chief Justice. The Senate confirmed all six nominees together, by voice vote, just two days later. Such speed and unanimity would be unthinkable today.
The Inauspicious Beginning
The Supreme Court's first session convened in February 1790 in New York City, which was then the nation's capital. The justices met in the Royal Exchange building at the foot of Broad Street, where merchants had gathered to trade goods before the Revolution.
It was not an impressive debut. The Court had no cases to decide. The justices spent their time organizing themselves, adopting rules, and waiting for actual disputes to arrive. The first case didn't reach them until 1791.
For its first decade, the Supreme Court was something of an afterthought. It lacked a permanent home, bouncing between New York, Philadelphia, and eventually Washington as the capital moved. It had little prestige. Chief Justice John Jay famously left the Court to serve as governor of New York, considering it a step up.
The Court's most significant early decision actually backfired spectacularly. In Chisholm versus Georgia (1793), the Court ruled that citizens of one state could sue another state in federal court. The states were so outraged at this affront to their sovereignty that they quickly ratified the Eleventh Amendment to overturn the decision. The infant Court had been slapped down by a constitutional amendment within two years of asserting itself.
John Marshall Invents the Modern Court
Everything changed when John Marshall became Chief Justice in 1801. He served for thirty-four years—still the longest tenure in Court history—and transformed a weak institution into a co-equal branch of government.
Marshall's genius lay in establishing principles that expanded the Court's power while appearing merely to apply neutral legal reasoning. In Marbury versus Madison (1803), he faced a political trap: the outgoing Federalist administration had appointed William Marbury as a justice of the peace, but the incoming Jefferson administration refused to deliver his commission. Marbury asked the Supreme Court to order Secretary of State James Madison to hand it over.
Marshall could have ordered Madison to deliver the commission, provoking a confrontation with President Jefferson that the Court would likely lose. Instead, he ruled that while Marbury had a right to his commission, the law giving the Court power to issue such orders was itself unconstitutional. The Court therefore couldn't help Marbury.
This apparent retreat was actually an advance. By striking down an act of Congress for the first time, Marshall established the principle that the Supreme Court could declare laws unconstitutional. He gave away a small battle to win the war for judicial supremacy.
Ending the Confusion of Multiple Opinions
Marshall also changed how the Court spoke. Previously, following British tradition, each justice had written his own opinion in every case—a practice called delivering opinions "seriatim" (one after another). This made it hard to know what the Court as an institution had actually decided.
Marshall instituted the practice of issuing a single "opinion of the Court," usually written by himself, that spoke for the majority. Individual justices could still write separately if they disagreed, but the Court now had one authoritative voice. This seemingly technical change dramatically increased the Court's power and clarity.
Slavery and the Court's Greatest Failure
The Supreme Court's worst moment came in 1857, when Chief Justice Roger Taney's Court decided Dred Scott versus Sandford. Dred Scott was an enslaved man who sued for his freedom, arguing that he had become free when his owner took him to live in territories where slavery was prohibited.
Taney's majority opinion didn't just rule against Scott. It declared that Black people, whether enslaved or free, could never be citizens of the United States. It announced that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories, effectively nullifying the Missouri Compromise that had maintained an uneasy peace between North and South for decades.
Rather than settling the slavery question, Dred Scott inflamed it. The decision helped precipitate the Civil War. It stands as a reminder that the Court's power to settle constitutional questions doesn't mean it will settle them wisely.
Reconstruction and Its Retreat
After the Civil War, three constitutional amendments transformed American law. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed citizenship to all persons born in the United States, promised "equal protection of the laws," and prohibited states from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without "due process of law." The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited denying the vote based on race.
These amendments were revolutionary. They were also, for nearly a century, largely ignored.
The Supreme Court gutted them almost immediately. In the Slaughter-House Cases (1873), the Court interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment so narrowly that it provided almost no protection against state abuses. In subsequent decisions, the Court permitted racial segregation, allowed states to disenfranchise Black voters through grandfather clauses and literacy tests, and generally acquiesced in the Jim Crow regime that replaced slavery with a new system of racial subordination.
Nine Old Men Against the New Deal
In the 1930s, the Court clashed directly with President Franklin Roosevelt's efforts to combat the Great Depression. A conservative majority struck down key New Deal programs as unconstitutional overreaches of federal power. The minimum wage, labor regulations, agricultural price supports—the Court invalidated them all.
Roosevelt, frustrated after winning reelection in 1936 by the largest electoral margin in over a century, proposed adding new justices to the Court—as many as six—to dilute the conservative majority. Critics called it "court-packing." It was legally permissible (the Constitution doesn't set the Court's size), but politically toxic.
Then something strange happened. Justice Owen Roberts, who had been voting with the conservatives, switched sides. In West Coast Hotel versus Parrish (1937), the Court upheld a minimum wage law virtually identical to one it had struck down the year before. Wits called it "the switch in time that saved nine."
Whether Roberts was responding to political pressure or simply reconsidering his position remains debated. But the Court's about-face ended the constitutional crisis. Roosevelt's court-packing plan died, and the Court stopped blocking economic regulation. The constitutional meaning of federal power had shifted dramatically without a single word of the Constitution changing.
The Warren Revolution
Earl Warren became Chief Justice in 1953, appointed by President Eisenhower—who later reportedly called it the biggest mistake of his presidency. Warren had been the Republican governor of California and the party's 1948 vice-presidential nominee. No one expected him to lead a liberal judicial revolution.
But lead one he did. In Brown versus Board of Education (1954), a unanimous Court declared that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause. "Separate but equal," the doctrine that had permitted Jim Crow, was dead. Chief Justice Warren worked tirelessly to achieve unanimity, understanding that a divided Court would have given segregationists an excuse to resist.
Brown was just the beginning. The Warren Court transformed American law on multiple fronts. In Miranda versus Arizona (1966), it required police to inform suspects of their rights before interrogation—the famous "Miranda warning" that anyone who's watched a cop show can recite. In Gideon versus Wainwright (1963), it guaranteed poor defendants the right to appointed lawyers. In Mapp versus Ohio (1961), it required state courts to exclude evidence obtained through unconstitutional searches.
The Court recognized a constitutional right to privacy in Griswold versus Connecticut (1965), striking down laws prohibiting married couples from using contraception. It required legislative districts to have roughly equal populations in Reynolds versus Sims (1964), ending the rural domination of state legislatures. It limited school prayer and Bible reading in Engel versus Vitale (1962) and Abington School District versus Schempp (1963).
Conservatives were apoplectic. "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards dotted the South. But the Warren Court's legacy has largely endured. Miranda warnings are still required. School segregation is still unconstitutional. Legislative districts still must be equal in population.
The Confirmation Wars
How does someone become a Supreme Court justice? The Constitution is characteristically spare: the president nominates, and the Senate confirms. There are no qualifications specified—no requirement of legal training, prior judicial experience, citizenship, or even a minimum age.
In theory, a president could nominate anyone, and they could be confirmed. In practice, modern nominees are almost always sitting federal judges with long paper trails that can be scrutinized.
The confirmation process has grown increasingly contentious. Senate hearings for nominees were rare before the twentieth century. The first nominee to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee was Harlan Fiske Stone in 1925, and he appeared only because he wanted to address concerns about his ties to Wall Street. Systematic questioning didn't begin until 1955.
Today, confirmation hearings are theatrical events. Senators speechify about their judicial philosophies. Nominees deploy what's been called the "Ginsburg rule"—named for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who pioneered the approach—declining to answer questions about how they might rule on future cases. Interest groups mobilize for and against nominees. The process can stretch for months.
Outright rejections are rare but not unheard of. Robert Bork, nominated by President Reagan in 1987, was voted down after contentious hearings in which Democrats portrayed him as a radical conservative who would roll back civil rights. His name became a verb: to "Bork" someone means to mount a fierce campaign against their nomination.
The Garland Episode
The most consequential modern confirmation battle involved a nomination that never received a vote at all. When Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a moderate appeals court judge, to replace him. Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, refused even to hold hearings, arguing that the vacancy should be filled by whoever won that year's presidential election.
The Constitution says nothing about when the Senate must act. The Republicans' refusal was unprecedented in modern times but not clearly unconstitutional. When Donald Trump won the presidency, he nominated Neil Gorsuch, who was confirmed after Senate Republicans changed the rules to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees.
Democrats were furious. Some argued that Republicans had "stolen" a Supreme Court seat. The episode poisoned relations between the parties and contributed to the increasingly partisan nature of Court confirmations.
How Many Justices?
The Constitution doesn't specify how many justices should serve on the Supreme Court. Congress has changed the number multiple times.
The original Court had six justices. The number increased to seven in 1807, to nine in 1837, and briefly to ten in 1863. In 1866, Congress reduced the Court to seven to prevent President Andrew Johnson from filling any vacancies. After Johnson left office, Congress raised the number back to nine in 1869, where it has remained ever since.
This means that "nine justices" is tradition, not constitutional command. Roosevelt's court-packing plan would have been legal; it was political opposition, not constitutional prohibition, that stopped it. Periodically, usually when one party is frustrated with the Court's direction, proposals surface to add justices. None has succeeded since 1869.
Lifetime Tenure
Supreme Court justices serve for life—or more precisely, during "good behavior," which means until they die, retire, or are impeached and removed. Only one justice, Samuel Chase, has ever been impeached by the House, and the Senate acquitted him in 1805. No justice has ever been removed.
Lifetime tenure was intended to insulate the judiciary from political pressure. Justices can rule as they believe the law requires without fear of losing their jobs. They don't need to curry favor with presidents or Congress.
But lifetime tenure also creates strategic considerations around retirement. Justices often try to time their departures so that an ideologically sympathetic president can choose their successor. Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice, reportedly quipped that he intended to outlive any Republican president. He didn't quite manage it, retiring in 1991 and being replaced by Clarence Thomas.
Some justices have served into their late eighties or beyond. This has prompted calls for term limits, perhaps eighteen-year terms that would give each president two appointments per four-year term. Such proposals would require either a constitutional amendment or creative statutory workarounds of dubious constitutionality.
How the Court Decides
When the Court agrees to hear a case, both sides submit written briefs arguing their positions. Then the justices hear oral argument—typically one hour, divided equally between the two sides. Justices interrupt freely with questions, and skilled advocates learn to incorporate their answers into their overall presentation.
After argument, the justices meet privately in conference to discuss and vote. No one else is present—no law clerks, no staff, no one. The Chief Justice speaks first, then the other justices in order of seniority. Each states their view and their vote.
If the Chief Justice is in the majority, he assigns the opinion—either writing it himself or designating another justice. If the Chief is in dissent, the senior justice in the majority makes the assignment. The assigned justice drafts an opinion that circulates among the other justices, who suggest changes, sometimes join it, and sometimes write separately.
A justice who agrees with the outcome but not the reasoning can write a "concurrence." A justice who disagrees with the outcome writes a "dissent." Some famous dissents have later become the law when the Court overruled itself. Justice John Marshall Harlan's dissent in Plessy versus Ferguson (1896), arguing that the Constitution was "color-blind" and that segregation was unconstitutional, was vindicated when Brown overruled Plessy fifty-eight years later.
The Roberts Court
John Roberts became Chief Justice in 2005, nominated by President George W. Bush. He was presented as a modest conservative who believed in judicial restraint and narrow decisions. That's not quite how things turned out.
The Roberts Court has issued sweeping decisions on major constitutional questions. In Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission (2010), it ruled that corporations and unions have First Amendment rights to spend unlimited amounts on political advertising. In District of Columbia versus Heller (2008), it held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms, not merely a collective right related to militia service.
In Shelby County versus Holder (2013), the Court struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that the formula determining which states needed federal approval to change their voting laws was outdated. Critics argued the decision gutted the most effective civil rights law ever passed.
Most dramatically, in Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), the Court overruled Roe versus Wade and Planned Parenthood versus Casey, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion that had existed for nearly fifty years. The decision returned abortion regulation entirely to the states, many of which immediately banned or severely restricted the procedure.
Bush v. Gore
No Supreme Court decision in modern times has been more controversial than Bush versus Gore (2000). The presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore came down to Florida, where the initial count showed Bush ahead by a tiny margin. Gore requested manual recounts in several counties. The legal battle over those recounts reached the Supreme Court.
The Court ruled, five to four, that the recounts must stop. The majority found that different counties using different standards to evaluate ballots violated the Equal Protection Clause—an argument few constitutional scholars had anticipated. The decision effectively awarded Florida's electoral votes to Bush and made him president.
The five justices in the majority had all been appointed by Republican presidents. The four dissenters had all been appointed by Democrats. The alignment reinforced perceptions that the Court had decided the case based on partisan preferences rather than neutral legal principles.
Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting, wrote that the real loser was "the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." More than two decades later, debate continues about whether the Court should have intervened at all, and whether its intervention was legally sound.
The Court's Paradox
The Supreme Court occupies a strange position in American democracy. Its members are unelected and serve for life. Its decisions can override the will of elected majorities expressed through legislation. Yet its power ultimately depends on public acceptance. The Court has no army, no police force, no way to enforce its rulings except through the willingness of the other branches and the public to go along.
This creates a delicate balance. The Court derives its legitimacy from the perception that it operates according to law rather than politics. When that perception erodes—as it has in recent years, with approval ratings at historic lows—the Court's authority becomes more fragile.
Presidents have defied the Court before. Andrew Jackson supposedly said of one ruling, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it." (The quote may be apocryphal, but Jackson did ignore the decision.) Abraham Lincoln declined to follow certain aspects of the Dred Scott ruling. Franklin Roosevelt threatened to pack the Court until it changed course.
Yet the norm of compliance has largely held. When the Court ordered President Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes, he complied, even though it meant his presidency was over. When the Court ordered the desegregation of schools, Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy sent federal troops to enforce the rulings against defiant state governors.
The Court in American Life
The Supreme Court touches American life in ways both visible and invisible. The Miranda warnings recited by police, the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney—these came from the Court. So did the right to marry someone of a different race (Loving versus Virginia, 1967) and the right to marry someone of the same sex (Obergefell versus Hodges, 2015).
The Court shapes how elections are financed, how schools are integrated, what the police can and cannot do, whether the government can execute criminals, what words can be banned as obscene, and whether a baker must make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
Its building, completed in 1935 after nearly a century and a half of the Court meeting in borrowed spaces, proclaims its authority with neoclassical grandeur. The marble columns and the inscription "Equal Justice Under Law" above the entrance project an image of majesty and permanence.
But the Court changes, slowly, justice by justice. Each president who fills a vacancy shifts its balance. Each generation relitigates old battles and fights new ones. The meaning of the Constitution, in practice, is what the current Court says it is—until the next Court says something different.
That's the paradox at the heart of American constitutional law: a written constitution interpreted by unelected judges with lifetime appointments, whose decisions can only be overturned by the extraordinarily difficult process of constitutional amendment, or by the Court itself changing its mind. It's an odd system. But for nearly two and a half centuries, it has more or less worked. Whether it continues to work depends on choices yet to be made—by justices, presidents, senators, and ultimately by the people themselves.