Supreme Court

23 Pages 5669 Words

The Supreme Court of the United States of America is the topic of this report. In this report I will discuss many supreme court cases, those cases precedence, and how I feel this topic has effected our society as a whole. The main part of this report will be just summaries of what has happened before, during, and after the cases take their place in front of our greatest court in our great nation. I will try to keep this report as an informational piece, but I do apologize for letting how I feel on a specific issue run its way into this paper.
I’ll start this report off with the court case which gave the Supreme Court most of its powers today. Marbury vs. Madison. On the eve of his last day in office outgoing President John Adams, a Federalist, nominates 82 Federalist justices. These "midnight judges" as they were called represented a threat to incoming President Thomas Jefferson, a Democrat-Republican. Jefferson feared Federalist interpretation of the law for the next 20 years, a fear that ended up coming to fruition. Among these midnight judges was one William Marbury. Jefferson ordered his Secretary of State, John Madison, not to deliver the official documents granting Marbury his position. Based upon the Judiciary Act of 1801, Marbury appealed directly to the Supreme Court asking for a "writ of mandamus" or an order to act.
Chief Justice John Marshall recognized he would be correct in ordering Madison to deliver the papers but feared weakening the image of the Court if President Jefferson refused to comply. Instead Marshall ruled that the Judiciary Act of 1801, which Marbury had used to submit his claim directly to the Court was unconstitutional, and it was. In this way the Court was able to rule a law unconstitutional and thus created the important precedent of judicial review.
This court case alone made the Supreme Court more powerful then the other two branches of the government. Of course President Jefferso...