Blog #2: Supreme Court

  

    While before this class I had some knowledge of the Supreme Court and how they operate, it was only after reading the History Channel article that I learned many of the specific details around them. For one, I did not know that the way that someone joins the supreme court is by being nominated by the president and then either being accepted or rejected by the senate. This makes sense to me as it is a natural part of the checks and balances that are critical to preventing corruption and abuse of power in our government.

There are also quite a number of laws and rights that I did not know came from important decisions the supreme court has made. For example I did not know that the origin of the Miranda Rights come from the Miranda vs Arizona Case. In addition there are case rulings that I am surprised at how late it took for certain precedents to be set. There are of course ones that morally should have occurred earlier such as Obergefell vs. Hodges legalizing same sex marriage, but even more surprising are cases such as U.S vs. Nixon stopping the president from withholding evidence in criminal trials. These kinds of cases are more shocking to me because unlike same sex marriage, which has a long history of prejudice keeping it from becoming legal, I would have thought the prevention of abuse of presidential powers in something like the Nixon case, which is a key principle in our checks and balances, would have been established much earlier than it was.

However I think one of the biggest takeaways from learning about the Supreme Court, is understanding that they are far from perfect. How they chose to handle cases in the past such as Dred Scott vs. Sanford, and Plessy vs. Ferguson, show that decisions made by the supreme court should not be viewed as absolute. It is important for us as American citizens to constantly reevaluate and reconsider the decisions made by our government, and make sure that they are suitable for the current times.