Blog Post #2

 Supreme Court Reflection Part 1

In school, students learn about the supreme court and its basic functions, but it is rarely deeply dived into like it is done in this video, and as a result I found numerous topics discussed in the video surprising and eye opening about the supreme court. First, I didn't realize that supreme court justices got private time to look at every case. My honest impression of the supreme court was that they had a public court session about the topic where they made their opinions and then discussed among each other afterwards, but in reality, it seems more that they can make their opinions before the trial by themselves. 

The comment made by justice David H. Souter about the 3- or 5-year rule was quite bizarre to me. Like just imagine showing up to your new job on the first day and someone telling you that just give it 3 or 5 years and then it's actually all right, that's crazy. Not to mention that he mentions that you start to do your work properly when you forget that you are at the supreme court, which makes sense in a way as you do feel kind of anxious and pressured when in a new job, especially one of this high importance, but it just seems so out of this world to me. 

From this video alone, especially with the comments about the job, I have gained a newfound appreciation for the justices and what they have dealt with, as before I thought it was easier than it actually is. Hearing that the court wasn't respected before Marshall and caused me to also ponder why Marbury v. Madison was so influential that it caused the public's opinion to change about the court. 

I also never realized that the court decided to not allow congress to free slaves and said that blacks could never be citizens, which I guess goes to show how some history is not talked about in school. 

Finally, for the last interesting topic in the first part, I thought it was interesting that not only did every justice come into conference with their decision already decided, but how that decision sometimes changed. I feel like because this decision sometimes changes, it shows how the supreme court is doing its job properly, as its not only decided through private analysis some of which could be heavily biased, even though it is not supposed to be.

Supreme Court Reflection Part 2

The first point of interest I had from this part of the video was about the oral discussions that occur. I found it quite intriguing that the justices sometimes will use the attorneys discussing the case as a "post box" for talking with the other justices and making sure they see this argument they might not have before. 

Also mentioned by Burt Neuborne, lawyers usually only argue before one to potentially five judges, and basically never nine, so it is always a different experience when they are arguing before nine. I feel like I understand how much of a difference it would be, and to be quite fair I thought that lower cases at the state courts were discussed before possibly seven judges, so to find out that jumping from the state court to federal is from five to nine is quite a surprise to me. 

I do find that the justices usually asking different lines of questioning to be quite good and proper for the court to have as it allows multiple perspectives and decisions to be considered, but as a result it does indeed cause some stress onto the lawyer having to juggle the many different lines of questions in the small frame of thirty minutes. 

The releasing of opinions practically only at the end of the term in June was also quite eye opening to me. I thought that opinions were usually released a couple of weeks or a month or so after the case was discussed, but there is a lot more time between the discussion and release due to the drafting process of the opinion that I hadn't known about. Also not known was the fact that justices could switch sides during the writing of the draft opinions, as I thought it was generally only used as an explanation to the public rather than one from one justice to another. 

Overall, I found the most important part of both videos that I learned was of the huge process behind every decision in the supreme court. In the classroom, I had only learned about the process of a case getting the supreme court, but no the process of the court itself, and after hearing of the process of our highest court in America, I stand by my opinion that I believe the supreme court is doing its job correctly. 

Though some decisions may seem outrageous at times, I can thoroughly believe that this was come to a conclusion after a long process that has practically removed many biases from the overall decision.