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Supreme Court of the United States
I. INTRODUCTION
Supreme Court of the United States, highest court in the United States and the chief authority in the judicial branch, one of three branches of the United States federal government. The Supreme Court hears appeals from decisions of lower federal courts and state supreme courts, and it resolves issues of constitutional and federal law. It stands as the ultimate authority in constitutional interpretation, and its decisions can be changed only by a constitutional amendment.
Nine judges sit on the Court: the chief justice of the United States and eight associate justices. The president of the United States appoints them to the Court for life terms, but the U.S. Senate must approve each appointment with a majority vote. Justices and Court staff work in the Supreme Court Building, constructed in 1935, across the street from the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Before 1935 the justices met in various rooms in the Capitol and elsewhere.
The Supreme Court wields complete authority over the federal courts, but it has only limited power over state courts. The Court has the final word on cases heard by federal courts, and it writes procedures that these courts must follow. All federal courts must abide by the Supreme Court's interpretation of federal laws and the Constitution of the United States . The Supreme Court's interpretations of federal law and the Constitution also apply to the state courts, but the Court cannot interpret state law or issues arising under state constitutions, and it does not supervise state court operations.
The Supreme Court's most important responsibility is to decide cases that raise questions of constitutional interpretation. The Court decides if a law or government action violates the Constitution. This power, known as judicial review, enables the Court to invalidate both federal and state laws when they conflict with its interpretation of the Constitution. Judicial review thus puts the Supreme Court in a pivotal role in the American political system, making it the referee in disputes among various branches of government, and as the ultimate authority for many of the most important issues in the country. In 1954, for example, the Court banned racial segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education. The ruling started a long process of desegregating schools and many other aspects of American society. In the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, the Court overturned state prohibitions on abortionconcluding that the Constitution guarantees every woman a right to choose an abortion, at least during early stages of a pregnancy. The Court's constitutional decisions have affected virtually every area of American life, from the basic ways in which business and the economy are regulated to freedom of speech and religion.
Supreme Court of the United States , highest court in the United States and the chief authority in the judicial branch, one of three branches of the United States federal government. The Supreme Court hears appeals from decisions of lower federal courts and state supreme courts, and it resolves issues of constitutional and federal law. It stands as the ultimate authority in constitutional interpretation, and its decisions can be changed only by a constitutional amendment.
Nine judges sit on the Court: the chief justice of the United States and eight associate justices. The president of the United States appoints them to the Court for life terms, but the U.S. Senate must approve each appointment with a majority vote. Justices and Court staff work in the Supreme Court Building, constructed in 1935, across the street from the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Before 1935 the justices met in various rooms in the Capitol and elsewhere.
The Supreme Court wields complete authority over the federal courts, but it has only limited power over state courts. The Court has the final word on cases heard by federal courts, and it writes procedures that these courts must follow. All federal courts must abide by the Supreme Court's interpretation of federal laws and the Constitution of the United States . The Supreme Court's interpretations of federal law and the Constitution also apply to the state courts, but the Court cannot interpret state law or issues arising under state constitutions, and it does not supervise state court operations.
The Supreme Court's most important responsibility is to decide cases that raise questions of constitutional interpretation. The Court decides if a law or government action violates the Constitution. This power, known as judicial review, enables the Court to invalidate both federal and state laws when they conflict with its interpretation of the Constitution. Judicial review thus puts the Supreme Court in a pivotal role in the American political system, making it the referee in disputes among various branches of government, and as the ultimate authority for many of the most important issues in the country. In 1954, for example, the Court banned racial segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education . The ruling started a long process of desegregating schools and many other aspects of American society. In the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, the Court overturned state prohibitions on abortionconcluding that the Constitution guarantees every woman a right to choose an abortion, at least during early stages of a pregnancy. The Court's constitutional decisions have affected virtually every area of American life, from the basic ways in which business and the economy are regulated to freedom of speech and religion.
II. Power of the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court is the only court mentioned by name in the Constitution. Article III establishes the Court as the top of the country's judicial branch, making it equal to the executive branch (the president) and the legislative branch (Congress). Article III also gives the Court jurisdiction (authority to review) over broad classes of cases. In 1803 in Marbury v. Madison the Court interpreted its own authority, ruling that the Constitution gave it the power to strike down unconstitutional acts of governmentthat is, laws or other government conduct that violate the Constitution. This decision created the power of judicial review, an essential component in the American system of checks and balances , a system that is intended to safeguard Americans from government abuses of power.
III. Jurisdiction
Article III gives the Supreme Court two types of jurisdiction. The Court's most important jurisdiction is appellate, the power to hear appeals of cases decided in lower federal courts and state supreme courts. Under Article III, the Court's appellate jurisdiction extends to seven classes of cases: (1) cases arising under the Constitution, federal law, or treaty; (2) those involving admiralty and maritime matters; (3) those in which the United States itself is a party; (4) cases between two or more states; (5) cases between citizens of different states or foreign countries; (6) cases between a state and individuals or foreign countries; and (7) cases between citizens of the same state if they are disputing ownership of land given by different states. The first category is the most important. In these cases, part of the federal question jurisdiction, the Court issues its most far-reaching constitutional decisions and other major rulings involving federal law.
The Supreme Court has a far less important authority known as its original jurisdiction, which includes cases that have not been previously heard in other courts. This gives the Court the power to sit as a trial court to hear cases affecting ambassadors and other foreign officials, and in cases in which a state is a party. The Court rarely exercises its original jurisdiction, since Congress has granted concurrent jurisdiction over most of these cases to the lower courts. Only disputes between two or more states must be heard initially in the Supreme Court. In 1997 and 1998, for example, it heard a dispute between New York and New Jersey over the ownership of Ellis Island.
Congress cannot alter the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, but Article III of the Constitution gives it power to control the Court's appellate jurisdiction. The Court may not exercise any of its appellate jurisdiction without congressional authorization, and Congress may limit the appellate jurisdiction however it chooses. Congress has authorized the Court to use its full appellate jurisdiction, except on rare occasions.
IV. Judicial Review
The Supreme Court's principle power is judicial review the right of the Court to declare laws unconstitutional. This authority is not expressly stated in the Constitution. The Supreme Court has exercised judicial review since 1803, when Chief Justice John Marshall first announced it in Marbury v. Madison. Marshall deduced the necessity of such a power from the purpose and existence of the Constitution. He reasoned that judicial review was necessary to implement the Constitution's substantive and procedural limits on the government. If the Court could not strike down a law that conflicted with the Constitution, Marshall said, then the legislature would have a real and practical omnipotence. Judicial review is both a powerful and controversial tool because it allows the Supreme Court to have the ultimate word on what the Constitution means. This permits the Court justiceswho are appointed rather than electedto overrule decisions already made by Congress and legislatures throughout the country.
V. Membership
The Constitution does not specify the number of justices on the Supreme Court, leaving the issue to Congress. The first Supreme Court in 1789 consisted of five justices. Initially the justices' duties included traveling through the country to hear cases in federal circuit courts. Congress added a sixth seat in 1790 and a seventh in 1807 to ease the strain on justices as the number of circuit courts increased. Congress added the eighth and ninth seats in 1837. Membership stayed at nine until 1863, when Congress added a tenth seat, only to abolish it when a justice died in 1865. In 1867 Congress reduced the seats to seven to limit the opportunity of President Andrew Johnson to appoint new members. Congress restored the number of seats to nine in 1869, and in 1891 abolished the Supreme Court justices' circuit-riding burden. The number of justices has remained fixed at nine, making tie votes unlikely unless circumstances prevent a justice from participating in deliberations.
VI. Qualifications
The Constitution does not specify formal qualifications for membership on the Supreme Court. From the beginning, though, justices have all been lawyers, and most pursued legal and political careers before serving on the Court. Many justices served as members of Congress, governors, or members of the Cabinet. One president, William Howard Taft , was later appointed chief justice. Some justices came to the Court from private law practice, and others were appointed from positions as law professors. Many justices appointed in the second half of the 20th century had experience in the United States courts of appeal and other lower courts. Only one justice, Charles Evans Hughes , served on the Court twice. President Taft appointed Hughes, then governor of New York, to the Court in 1910. Hughes gave up his Court seat in 1916 to run for president, but he lost in a close race against Woodrow Wilson . In 1930 President Herbert Hoover returned Hughes to the Court as chief justice.
VII. Appointment and Confirmation
Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed by the president and must be confirmed by a majority vote in the Senate. The president usually chooses the nominees carefully to minimize the possibility that the justice will veer far from the administration's own agenda after he or she is confirmed. The president must also be careful to select a nominee with strong chances for Senate confirmation, otherwise the administration may lose prestige in a bruising confirmation battle with the Senate. Presidents often try to secure Senate support by balancing the Court's geographic and regional background. Many 20th-century presidents have also tried to balance the Court's religious, racial, ethnic, and gender makeup.
Only Protestants served on the Court until 1836, when the Senate confirmed President Andrew Jackson's nomination of Roger B. Taney , a Catholic. Since then there has almost always been a Catholic on the Court. Louis D. Brandeis was the first Jewish justice in 1916. Civil rights lawyer Thurgood D. Marshall became the first African American justice in 1967. President Ronald Reagan appointed the first woman, Sandra Day O'Connor , in 1981. The first Italian American, Antonin Scalia , came to the Court in 1986. In the late 1990s, the Court consisted of four Protestants, three Catholics, and two Jews; seven men, one of whom was black, and two women. Two were from Arizona (Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor), and one each were from California (Anthony M. Kennedy ), the District of Columbia (Scalia), Georgia (Clarence Thomas ), Illinois (John Paul Stevens ), Massachusetts (Stephen G. Breyer ), New Hampshire (David H. Souter ), and New York (Ruth Bader Ginsburg ).
On average, the Senate rejects about 20 percent of all nominees to the Supreme Court. The president's choice must face questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which then makes a recommendation to the Senate as a whole. The Senate began asking nominees to appear before the Judiciary Committee only in 1925, when President Calvin Coolidge's nomination of Harlan Fiske Stone was in jeopardy. Felix Frankfurter, a nominee of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1939. Such appearances before the committee became accepted practice in 1955, when John M. Harlan testified.
Confirmation hearings are sometimes polite, quiet affairs, but some have been intensely political dramas that have gripped the nation. In 1987, for example, the Senate held 12 days of rancorous hearings into President Ronald Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert Bork . Although Bork had strong qualifications, his conservative views led many groups throughout the country to oppose his nomination. Some senators charged that he had undergone a confirmation conversioncontradicting his earlier published views to secure appointment. The full Senate defeated the nomination by a vote of 58 to 42. In 1991 President George Bush nominated Judge Clarence Thomas to replace the ailing Thurgood Marshall. An initial debate over his qualifications gave way to a nationally televised drama over a leaked accusation by Oklahoma University Law School Professor Anita Hill that Thomas had sexually harassed her. Thomas bitterly denied the allegations, charging that he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. The Senate eventually confirmed him by a vote of 52 to 48, the second closest vote in history.
VIII. Removal from Office
Justices serve lifetime appointments. Under the Constitution they can be removed from the Court only by first being impeached (accused) by a majority vote of the U.S. House of Representatives and then convicted by a two-thirds vote of the Senate. There is no precise standard for determining whether a justice has committed an impeachable offense, though the consensus is that removal should be for criminal or ethical lapses, not for partisan political reasons. No justice has ever been removed through this process, and only one justice of the Supreme Court has ever been impeached. In 1805 Justice Samuel Chase was impeached in the House by his political enemies, but the Senate failed to convict when it became apparent that Chase's opponents were after him not because he had committed any wrongdoing but because they disagreed with his decisions. The possibility of impeachment may have been a factor in the resignation of Justice Abe Fortas , who left the Court in 1969 after allegations surfaced that he had accepted a questionable fee from a private foundation. Some conservative groups rallied for the removal of Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s, but their efforts failed.
In the wake of the controversy over Abe Fortas's financial practices, the Court became more restrained in its public activities. Once confirmed to the Court, justices try to ensure that their investments and outside income do not bring their integrity into question. Common practice now dictates that justices also remove themselves from politics, refraining from speaking out about controversial issues or pending legislation. The justices can make public speeches, but these are usually confined to subjects related to the law in general and to the federal court system. In these and other questions of judicial ethics the Court usually follows the American Bar Association (ABA) Code of Judicial Conduct, although these rules are not binding on the Court.
IX. The Work of the Court
The Supreme Court hears only a tiny fraction of the cases that come before it. When the Court declines to hear a case, the decision of the lower court stands as the final word on the case. Each year the Court receives thousands of petitions to hear cases, but it usually decides to consider only a few. In 1995, for example, the Court had 7,565 cases on its docket, and the justices heard oral arguments in just 90 and issued signed opinionswritten explanations of its decisionsin only 75. Ten years earlier the Court's docket had been much smaller, consisting of 5,185 cases, although it issued signed opinions in 151 cases.
The growth in petitions has many causes: a larger population, a more complex economy, and the proliferation of business and other relationships. Adding to the Court's workload is a steady growth in congressional and state legislation that requires judicial interpretation, and an increasing number of constitutional and other issues that can be reviewed in the federal courts.
By law the Court's term begins the first Monday in October and usually runs through the end of June, after disposing of all cases that have been argued during the term. On rare occasions, when a critical case has arisen, the Court has heard arguments and issued decisions in the summer; for example, in 1974 the Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, the Watergate tapes case, on July 24.
The Court does not meet continuously in formal sessions during its nine-month term. Instead, the Court divides its time into four separate but related activities. First, some time is allocated to reading through the thousands of petitions for review of cases that come annually to the Court. This time is not formally assigned but is available during the summer and during those periods when the Court is not sitting to hear cases. Second, the Court allocates blocks of time for oral argumentsthe live discussion in which lawyers for both sides present their clients' positions to the justices. From October through April, the justices meet in blocks of two consecutive weeks on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays to hear oral arguments. These public sessions run from 10 AM to 3 PM, with a one-hour lunch recess, giving the Court time to hear from lawyers in four cases each day.
During the weeks of oral arguments the Court sets aside its third allotment of time, for private discussions of how each justice will vote on the cases they have just heard. Time is also allowed for the justices to discuss which additional cases to hear. These private discussions are usually held on Wednesday afternoons and Fridays during the weeks of oral arguments. The justices set aside a fourth block of time to work on writing their opinionsthe statements of what the justices have decided and their reasoning in the case. This writing period is usually in the weeks following each two weeks of oral argument.
The chief justice presides at the justices' conferences and assigns a justice to write opinions. The chief justice also acts as spokesperson for the Court and for the federal judicial system, and supervises the Court's budget and administrative staff. But in the central matter of hearing and deciding cases, the chief justice and the associate justices are equals.
For a major government institution, the Supreme Court has a relatively small staff of about 325 people. The Court's annual budget is about $30 million, a tiny fraction of the total budget for the federal judiciary, which stood at $3.1 billion in 1996. Congress's annual budget that year was about $2 billion. In 1996 Congress set the chief justice's salary at $171,500, and the associate justices' at $164,100.
The clerk of the Court serves as the Supreme Court's chief administrative officer, supervising a staff of 30 under the guidance of the chief justice. The marshal of the Court supervises all building operations. The reporter of decisions oversees the printing and publication of the Court's decisions. Other key personnel are the librarian and the public information officer. In addition, each justice is entitled to hire four law clerks, almost always recent top graduates of law schools, many of whom have served clerkships in a lower court the previous year.
X. How Cases Come Before The Court
Supreme Court of the United States , highest court in the United States and the chief authority in the judicial branch, one of three branches of the United States federal government. The Supreme Court hears appeals from decisions of lower federal courts and state supreme courts, and it resolves issues of constitutional and federal law. It stands as the ultimate authority in constitutional interpretation, and its decisions can be changed only by a constitutional amendment.
Nine judges sit on the Court: the chief justice of the United States and eight associate justices. The president of the United States appoints them to the Court for life terms, but the U.S. Senate must approve each appointment with a majority vote. Justices and Court staff work in the Supreme Court Building, constructed in 1935, across the street from the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Before 1935 the justices met in various rooms in the Capitol and elsewhere.
The Supreme Court wields complete authority over the federal courts, but it has only limited power over state courts. The Court has the final word on cases heard by federal courts, and it writes procedures that these courts must follow. All federal courts must abide by the Supreme Court's interpretation of federal laws and the Constitution of the United States . The Supreme Court's interpretations of federal law and the Constitution also apply to the state courts, but the Court cannot interpret state law or issues arising under state constitutions, and it does not supervise state court operations.
The Supreme Court's most important responsibility is to decide cases that raise questions of constitutional interpretation. The Court decides if a law or government action violates the Constitution. This power, known as judicial review, enables the Court to invalidate both federal and state laws when they conflict with its interpretation of the Constitution. Judicial review thus puts the Supreme Court in a pivotal role in the American political system, making it the referee in disputes among various branches of government, and as the ultimate authority for many of the most important issues in the country. In 1954, for example, the Court banned racial segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education . The ruling started a long process of desegregating schools and many other aspects of American society. In the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, the Court overturned state prohibitions on abortionconcluding that the Constitution guarantees every woman a right to choose an abortion, at least during early stages of a pregnancy. The Court's constitutional decisions have affected virtually every area of American life, from the basic ways in which business and the economy are regulated to freedom of speech and religion.
II. Power of the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court is the only court mentioned by name in the Constitution. Article III establishes the Court as the top of the country's judicial branch, making it equal to the executive branch (the president) and the legislative branch (Congress). Article III also gives the Court jurisdiction (authority to review) over broad classes of cases. In 1803 in Marbury v. Madison the Court interpreted its own authority, ruling that the Constitution gave it the power to strike down unconstitutional acts of governmentthat is, laws or other government conduct that violate the Constitution. This decision created the power of judicial review, an essential component in the American system of checks and balances , a system that is intended to safeguard Americans from government abuses of power.
III. Jurisdiction
Article III gives the Supreme Court two types of jurisdiction. The Court's most important jurisdiction is appellate, the power to hear appeals of cases decided in lower federal courts and state supreme courts. Under Article III, the Court's appellate jurisdiction extends to seven classes of cases: (1) cases arising under the Constitution, federal law, or treaty; (2) those involving admiralty and maritime matters; (3) those in which the United States itself is a party; (4) cases between two or more states; (5) cases between citizens of different states or foreign countries; (6) cases between a state and individuals or foreign countries; and (7) cases between citizens of the same state if they are disputing ownership of land given by different states. The first category is the most important. In these cases, part of the federal question jurisdiction, the Court issues its most far-reaching constitutional decisions and other major rulings involving federal law.
The Supreme Court has a far less important authority known as its original jurisdiction, which includes cases that have not been previously heard in other courts. This gives the Court the power to sit as a trial court to hear cases affecting ambassadors and other foreign officials, and in cases in which a state is a party. The Court rarely exercises its original jurisdiction, since Congress has granted concurrent jurisdiction over most of these cases to the lower courts. Only disputes between two or more states must be heard initially in the Supreme Court. In 1997 and 1998, for example, it heard a dispute between New York and New Jersey over the ownership of Ellis Island.
Congress cannot alter the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, but Article III of the Constitution gives it power to control the Court's appellate jurisdiction. The Court may not exercise any of its appellate jurisdiction without congressional authorization, and Congress may limit the appellate jurisdiction however it chooses. Congress has authorized the Court to use its full appellate jurisdiction, except on rare occasions.
IV. Judicial Review
The Supreme Court's principle power is judicial review the right of the Court to declare laws unconstitutional. This authority is not expressly stated in the Constitution. The Supreme Court has exercised judicial review since 1803, when Chief Justice John Marshall first announced it in Marbury v. Madison. Marshall deduced the necessity of such a power from the purpose and existence of the Constitution. He reasoned that judicial review was necessary to implement the Constitution's substantive and procedural limits on the government. If the Court could not strike down a law that conflicted with the Constitution, Marshall said, then the legislature would have a real and practical omnipotence. Judicial review is both a powerful and controversial tool because it allows the Supreme Court to have the ultimate word on what the Constitution means. This permits the Court justiceswho are appointed rather than electedto overrule decisions already made by Congress and legislatures throughout the country.
V. Membership
The Constitution does not specify the number of justices on the Supreme Court, leaving the issue to Congress. The first Supreme Court in 1789 consisted of five justices. Initially the justices' duties included traveling through the country to hear cases in federal circuit courts. Congress added a sixth seat in 1790 and a seventh in 1807 to ease the strain on justices as the number of circuit courts increased. Congress added the eighth and ninth seats in 1837. Membership stayed at nine until 1863, when Congress added a tenth seat, only to abolish it when a justice died in 1865. In 1867 Congress reduced the seats to seven to limit the opportunity of President Andrew Johnson to appoint new members. Congress restored the number of seats to nine in 1869, and in 1891 abolished the Supreme Court justices' circuit-riding burden. The number of justices has remained fixed at nine, making tie votes unlikely unless circumstances prevent a justice from participating in deliberations.
VI. Qualifications
The Constitution does not specify formal qualifications for membership on the Supreme Court. From the beginning, though, justices have all been lawyers, and most pursued legal and political careers before serving on the Court. Many justices served as members of Congress, governors, or members of the Cabinet. One president, William Howard Taft , was later appointed chief justice. Some justices came to the Court from private law practice, and others were appointed from positions as law professors. Many justices appointed in the second half of the 20th century had experience in the United States courts of appeal and other lower courts. Only one justice, Charles Evans Hughes , served on the Court twice. President Taft appointed Hughes, then governor of New York, to the Court in 1910. Hughes gave up his Court seat in 1916 to run for president, but he lost in a close race against Woodrow Wilson . In 1930 President Herbert Hoover returned Hughes to the Court as chief justice.
VII. Appointment and Confirmation
Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed by the president and must be confirmed by a majority vote in the Senate. The president usually chooses the nominees carefully to minimize the possibility that the justice will veer far from the administration's own agenda after he or she is confirmed. The president must also be careful to select a nominee with strong chances for Senate confirmation, otherwise the administration may lose prestige in a bruising confirmation battle with the Senate. Presidents often try to secure Senate support by balancing the Court's geographic and regional background. Many 20th-century presidents have also tried to balance the Court's religious, racial, ethnic, and gender makeup.
Only Protestants served on the Court until 1836, when the Senate confirmed President Andrew Jackson's nomination of Roger B. Taney , a Catholic. Since then there has almost always been a Catholic on the Court. Louis D. Brandeis was the first Jewish justice in 1916. Civil rights lawyer Thurgood D. Marshall became the first African American justice in 1967. President Ronald Reagan appointed the first woman, Sandra Day O'Connor , in 1981. The first Italian American, Antonin Scalia , came to the Court in 1986. In the late 1990s, the Court consisted of four Protestants, three Catholics, and two Jews; seven men, one of whom was black, and two women. Two were from Arizona (Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor), and one each were from California (Anthony M. Kennedy ), the District of Columbia (Scalia), Georgia (Clarence Thomas ), Illinois (John Paul Stevens ), Massachusetts (Stephen G. Breyer ), New Hampshire (David H. Souter ), and New York (Ruth Bader Ginsburg ).
On average, the Senate rejects about 20 percent of all nominees to the Supreme Court. The president's choice must face questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which then makes a recommendation to the Senate as a whole. The Senate began asking nominees to appear before the Judiciary Committee only in 1925, when President Calvin Coolidge's nomination of Harlan Fiske Stone was in jeopardy. Felix Frankfurter, a nominee of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1939. Such appearances before the committee became accepted practice in 1955, when John M. Harlan testified.
Confirmation hearings are sometimes polite, quiet affairs, but some have been intensely political dramas that have gripped the nation. In 1987, for example, the Senate held 12 days of rancorous hearings into President Ronald Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert Bork . Although Bork had strong qualifications, his conservative views led many groups throughout the country to oppose his nomination. Some senators charged that he had undergone a confirmation conversioncontradicting his earlier published views to secure appointment. The full Senate defeated the nomination by a vote of 58 to 42. In 1991 President George Bush nominated Judge Clarence Thomas to replace the ailing Thurgood Marshall. An initial debate over his qualifications gave way to a nationally televised drama over a leaked accusation by Oklahoma University Law School Professor Anita Hill that Thomas had sexually harassed her. Thomas bitterly denied the allegations, charging that he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. The Senate eventually confirmed him by a vote of 52 to 48, the second closest vote in history.
VIII. Removal from Office
Justices serve lifetime appointments. Under the Constitution they can be removed from the Court only by first being impeached (accused) by a majority vote of the U.S. House of Representatives and then convicted by a two-thirds vote of the Senate. There is no precise standard for determining whether a justice has committed an impeachable offense, though the consensus is that removal should be for criminal or ethical lapses, not for partisan political reasons. No justice has ever been removed through this process, and only one justice of the Supreme Court has ever been impeached. In 1805 Justice Samuel Chase was impeached in the House by his political enemies, but the Senate failed to convict when it became apparent that Chase's opponents were after him not because he had committed any wrongdoing but because they disagreed with his decisions. The possibility of impeachment may have been a factor in the resignation of Justice Abe Fortas , who left the Court in 1969 after allegations surfaced that he had accepted a questionable fee from a private foundation. Some conservative groups rallied for the removal of Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s, but their efforts failed.
In the wake of the controversy over Abe Fortas's financial practices, the Court became more restrained in its public activities. Once confirmed to the Court, justices try to ensure that their investments and outside income do not bring their integrity into question. Common practice now dictates that justices also remove themselves from politics, refraining from speaking out about controversial issues or pending legislation. The justices can make public speeches, but these are usually confined to subjects related to the law in general and to the federal court system. In these and other questions of judicial ethics the Court usually follows the American Bar Association (ABA) Code of Judicial Conduct, although these rules are not binding on the Court.
IX. The Work of the Court
The Supreme Court hears only a tiny fraction of the cases that come before it. When the Court declines to hear a case, the decision of the lower court stands as the final word on the case. Each year the Court receives thousands of petitions to hear cases, but it usually decides to consider only a few. In 1995, for example, the Court had 7,565 cases on its docket, and the justices heard oral arguments in just 90 and issued signed opinionswritten explanations of its decisionsin only 75. Ten years earlier the Court's docket had been much smaller, consisting of 5,185 cases, although it issued signed opinions in 151 cases.
The growth in petitions has many causes: a larger population, a more complex economy, and the proliferation of business and other relationships. Adding to the Court's workload is a steady growth in congressional and state legislation that requires judicial interpretation, and an increasing number of constitutional and other issues that can be reviewed in the federal courts.
By law the Court's term begins the first Monday in October and usually runs through the end of June, after disposing of all cases that have been argued during the term. On rare occasions, when a critical case has arisen, the Court has heard arguments and issued decisions in the summer; for example, in 1974 the Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, the Watergate tapes case, on July 24.
The Court does not meet continuously in formal sessions during its nine-month term. Instead, the Court divides its time into four separate but related activities. First, some time is allocated to reading through the thousands of petitions for review of cases that come annually to the Court. This time is not formally assigned but is available during the summer and during those periods when the Court is not sitting to hear cases. Second, the Court allocates blocks of time for oral argumentsthe live discussion in which lawyers for both sides present their clients' positions to the justices. From October through April, the justices meet in blocks of two consecutive weeks on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays to hear oral arguments. These public sessions run from 10 AM to 3 PM, with a one-hour lunch recess, giving the Court time to hear from lawyers in four cases each day.
During the weeks of oral arguments the Court sets aside its third allotment of time, for private discussions of how each justice will vote on the cases they have just heard. Time is also allowed for the justices to discuss which additional cases to hear. These private discussions are usually held on Wednesday afternoons and Fridays during the weeks of oral arguments. The justices set aside a fourth block of time to work on writing their opinionsthe statements of what the justices have decided and their reasoning in the case. This writing period is usually in the weeks following each two weeks of oral argument.
The chief justice presides at the justices' conferences and assigns a justice to write opinions. The chief justice also acts as spokesperson for the Court and for the federal judicial system, and supervises the Court's budget and administrative staff. But in the central matter of hearing and deciding cases, the chief justice and the associate justices are equals.
For a major government institution, the Supreme Court has a relatively small staff of about 325 people. The Court's annual budget is about $30 million, a tiny fraction of the total budget for the federal judiciary, which stood at $3.1 billion in 1996. Congress's annual budget that year was about $2 billion. In 1996 Congress set the chief justice's salary at $171,500, and the associate justices' at $164,100.
The clerk of the Court serves as the Supreme Court's chief administrative officer, supervising a staff of 30 under the guidance of the chief justice. The marshal of the Court supervises all building operations. The reporter of decisions oversees the printing and publication of the Court's decisions. Other key personnel are the librarian and the public information officer. In addition, each justice is entitled to hire four law clerks, almost always recent top graduates of law schools, many of whom have served clerkships in a lower court the previous year.
XVI. History
Since the early 19th century the Supreme Court has played a central role in resolving many of the country's most difficult problems. The Court has dealt with the issue of slavery and racism, the power of the federal government over the states, the role of the government in the economy, abortion, the rights of people accused of crimes, and many other complex issues. The Court's decisions have often stirred controversy, and those who disagree with its rulings have sometimes called its authority into question. Still, through most of its history the Supreme Court has stood as one of the most respected and trusted institutions in the United States.
A. Origins
The Supreme Court heard few cases in its early years, and played a rather insignificant role in the political system. During the 1790s, three chief justices served only brief terms, and several nominees turned down presidential appointments. When the nation's capital moved to Washington, D.C., in 1800, the Court did not initially have its own building. The justices had to conduct sessions in a series of temporary venues that included a congressional committee room, a Library of Congress office, and a courtroom built in the Capitol basement. These meager facilities failed to reflect the Court's increased stature after John Marshall became chief justice in 1801. Marshall served on the Court for 34 years, still one of the longest tenures, and transformed the Court into a potent engine of the national government. In 1803 in Marbury v. Madison , he announced the doctrine of judicial review, and his opinion was given as that of the entire Court rather than, as had been the custom, the opinion of a single justice.
In many other significant decisions, Marshall read the Constitution broadly to establish a wide scope of federal power for both Congress and the Court itself. Most significant was the 1819 decision in McCulloch v. Maryland, which defined congressional power quite broadly. Marshall held that the Necessary and Proper Clause in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution permitted Congress to establish a national bank, even though no such power was expressly stated in the Constitution. In the same case the Court established the supremacy of the federal government by barring the states from taxing any part of the federal government. In 1824 in Gibbons v. Ogden , the Court broadened congressional power under the Commerce Clause in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, laying the groundwork for extensive federal regulation of interstate commerce.
The Court under Marshall also claimed strong authority over the states by asserting its right to overturn state laws. In 1810 in Fletcher v. Peck, for example, the Court ruled that the Contracts Clause in Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution barred some state attempts at regulating economic activity. In 1819 the Marshall Court gave private corporations protection from state regulations in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (See Dartmouth College Case ). In both of these cases the Supreme Court served notice that the states could not pass laws that conflicted with the federal Constitution, and that the Court would be the judge of such conflicts. But during Marshall's final years as chief justice in the 1830s, the Court recognized limits on federal power as well. In 1833 the Court ruled in Barron v. Baltimore, for example, that the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) applied only to the federal government and not to the states.
B. Commerce, Slavery, and Civil War
By the 1830s the Court was forced to confront the issues raised by the country's rapid industrialization. As industry replaced agriculture, the Court under the leadership of Roger Brooke Taney sought to define the appropriate economic role for state and federal government. Early in Taney's term the Court confirmed the power of states to manage industrial development. In the 1837 case Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, the Court ruled that Massachusetts could enact a law that hurt some economic interests if it encouraged long-term economic growth overall. The Court decided in Swift v. Tyson in 1842 that federal courts had authority to develop general commercial law when the citizens of different states had legal conflicts, and the decision stood until 1938 when the Court said such authority belonged only to the states.
In 1848 in West River Bridge v. Dix, the Court upheld the states' constitutional authority to curb corporationstheir power of eminent domain as long as they paid just compensation for what they took. This case greatly aided the rapid growth of the new railroads. In Genesee Chief v. Fitzhugh (1852) the Court reversed a Marshall decision and expanded the reach of federal jurisdiction over the inland waterways. The Court also prevented the states from interfering with the development of steamships.
Although the Supreme Court's decisions in the first half of the 19th century helped the economy, that Court would forever be condemned in history's eyes because of its position on slavery. Four of the Court's nine members were from slave states, and only Justice John McLean clearly opposed slavery. The Court issued several proslavery opinions, including the notorious case of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which most historians consider a major step toward the Civil War (1861-1865). In the Dred Scott case , a slave owner hoped to secure an opinion from the Court declaring that slaves who escaped to free states did not automatically become free.
The Court could have limited its opinion to a narrow reading of Scott's right to sue in federal court, but instead went much further. First, the Court ruled that the federal government had no authority to control slavery in federal territories before they became states, even though Congress had done just that in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. It was the first time since Marbury v. Madison that the Court had overturned a federal law as unconstitutional. Second, the Court denied that even free blacks could be citizens of the United States. The Court seemed to say that not even free states could prohibit slavery, thus making political solutions and compromise among the states virtually impossible. Chief Justice Taney thought that he had resolved the issue of slavery once and for all. In a sense the Court had settled the issue, but only by sending the nation into civil war. The northern reaction to the Dred Scott case led directly to Abraham Lincoln's election as the first Republican president, the South's secession, and the war that ended slavery. Some blame for the American Civil War certainly falls on the failed political leadership in the White House and Congress, but the Supreme Court merits criticism as well.
C. From Reconstruction to the New Deal
Chief Justice Taney died in 1864, leaving the Court just as it faced Reconstruction the process of rebuilding the South's tattered economic and political structures. The Congress, dominated by northern Republicans, enacted strong laws that permitted military government in the South until new state governments could be put into place. The Court limited some efforts of the federal government to govern by military tribunals. In Ex parte Milligan in 1866 it refused to permit military trials of civilians as long as the civil courts were open. But the Court also upheld other Reconstruction laws and refused to bar President Andrew Johnson from enforcing them. The Court showed great restraint when Congress stripped it of jurisdiction to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of a Reconstruction act. Even though the case was pending, the Court agreed in Ex parte McCardle in 1869 that if Congress limited the Court's jurisdiction according to the Constitution, the Court would be powerless to act. This decision alleviated fears that the Court was determined to rule Reconstruction unconstitutional. By supporting Reconstruction, the Court helped the country recover from the social and economic destruction of the Civil War.
By 1870 the Court had to confront the new constitutional issues created by the states' ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The most pressing issue was: Since these constitutional amendments gave African Americans the right to freedom from slavery, did they also give blacks other civil rights protections? Congress assumed that the amendments did grant African Americans new rights and enacted several laws designed to protect civil rights through the federal courts. These laws seemed to threaten the historic balance between state and federal power, which the Supreme Court was reluctant to upset. In the so-called slaughterhouse cases in 1873, the Court took a narrow view of the 14th Amendment. A broad application of the amendment, the Court reasoned, would make the High Court a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the states whenever a civil right was at stake. In this and other decisions, the Court showed that it was unwilling to disrupt the balance of power between state and federal governments despite the 14th Amendment, which commanded change to ensure nationwide racial equality and due process of law. The Court also showed that it was unwilling to disrupt the racial status quo.
The Court's failure to make good on the Constitution's promise of equality reflected a widespread persistence of racism in American society and institutions. In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, the Court ruled that Congress had no authority to impose a national ban on discrimination in public accommodations such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels. The Court did strike down state laws that explicitly discriminated against blacks, as in Strauder v. West Virginia in 1880 when it ruled against juries that excluded blacks. But the Court had backed away from even modest protections by the end of the 19th century. In 1896 the Court in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the racial segregation of public facilities provided that they were separate but equal, a notorious position from which it began to retreat only in the 1940s.
By the early 20th century, many American citizens and political leaders backed the reforms of the Progressive movement, which advocated limits on large businesses and more rights for workers and consumers. The Supreme Court, however, sharply reined in the efforts of both the state and federal governments to regulate the economy. Strong pressure for national economic regulation led to some victories for Congress, but the Court generally denied Congress the power to break up certain monopolies and take other steps to improve market competition. In addition the Court adopted a doctrine of economic due process that made it more difficult for the government to regulate business and property rights. In 1905, for example, the Court ruled in Lochner v. New York that the state could not regulate the working hours of bakery workers. The Court reasoned that it could invalidate any unreasonable interference with the liberty of contract. Lochner and related cases created substantive due process, a new class of basic constitutional rights that was initially used to overturn minimum wage legislation and trade union protections.
The Supreme Court continued to limit state and federal involvement in the economy through the 1920s and into the Great Depression , the economic hard times of the 1930s. The restrictions at first hobbled the efforts of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to enact the New Deal, a program of economic reforms and government projects intended to confront the Depression. Roosevelt tried to get the New Deal through by packing the Courtexpanding the membership so that he could appoint justices open to his philosophy. Congress refused to expand the size of the Court, but the Court's justices soon eased restrictions on Roosevelt's programs. In a sharp about-face, the Court sustained far-reaching trade union and workplace regulations in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel in 1937. The Court soon used the federal commerce power to grant virtually unlimited authority to Congress to regulate whatever affected interstate commerce. The Court also rejected the doctrine of economic due process. By the 1940s, a new set of justices, all but one appointed by Roosevelt, had remade constitutional law dealing with economic matters.
D. Individual Rights in the First Half of the 20th Century
From the end of World War I in 1918 until the 1950s, the Supreme Court slowly but inconsistently expanded individual liberties. Though it upheld convictions of alleged subversives and approved many laws that restricted free speech, the Court also laid the groundwork for a revolution in First Amendment and privacy law. The Court expanded the existing doctrine of substantive due process to include personal rights in the 1923 Meyer v. Nebraska, which struck down a Nebraska ban on the teaching of foreign languages in elementary schools. By applying its notion of substantive due process to social concerns, the Court opened up the possibility that it would one day protect individuals in their more intimate relations.
The Court paved the way for expanded civil liberties in the 1925 case Gitlow v. New York, in which it said that the freedoms of speech and press enjoyed 14th Amendment protection against infringement by the state. Under this reasoning, the 14th Amendment incorporated most of the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights, and applied those rights to the states. Through this doctrine of incorporation, the Court also began a revolutionary expansion of the rights of the accused. In 1932, for instance, it ruled in Powell v. Alabama that states must provide a fair trial in criminal cases.
The Court remained conservative on most racial issues through the 1940s, and continued to deny minorities protection from racial discrimination in housing, employment, voting, and other areas. A low point came in the Court's 1944 decision in Korematsu v. United States, in which it refused to stop the government from holding more than 100,000 Japanese-American citizens in prison camps during World War II (1939-1945). Many critics regard the case as the Supreme Court's worst decision of the 20th century. (In 1988, citing the appalling injustice of the government's actions, Congress apologized and authorized a token payment to the survivors of the camps.) But the Court did note that laws and policies that turn on race would be examined with utmost scrutiny, a standard that the Court later used to reject many discriminatory laws. Beginning in 1938, the Court decided a series of cases that chipped away at the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson standard of separate but equal for racially segregated facilities, insisting that the equal has as much meaning as separate. In 1948 the Court invalidated all attempts to enforce racially restrictive covenantsclauses in deeds to land that prohibited owners from selling their property to blacks and other minorities.
E. The 1950s and 1960s: The Warren Court and Social Change
In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower named Earl Warren as chief justice of the Supreme Court. The Warren Court transformed the American legal system, implementing the largest expansion of civil rights and civil liberties in the nation's history. Warren had an immediate impact on the Court, forging unanimous support for the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education , which ended legalized segregation in public schools. The landmark ruling also launched a legal and political revolution that eventually abolished the shameful system of official racial segregation throughout American society. Although the Court seemed to offer a narrow rationale in Brown for overturning the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of separate but equal, it soon showed a willingness to strike down virtually all racially discriminatory laws. By the time the Court decided in Loving v. Virginia (1967) that Virginia could not ban interracial marriages, it was clear that the Court would use the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to bar almost all laws and policies that classified people on the basis of race. The Supreme Court did not stop at striking down discriminatory laws. It also affirmed the power of Congress to guarantee voting rights through strict laws, to require the racial integration of public facilities, and to enact a variety of other policies.
Under Chief Justice Warren's leadership, the Court also began to roll back restrictions on freedom of speech and association that previous Courts had endorsed in the early 1950s to fight Communism. By the late 1960s the Court dramatically transformed First Amendment doctrines. In New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964 the Court established a rule that made it far more difficult for public figures to win libel cases against the news media. By 1969, Warren's last year on the Court, the justices were willing to adopt a First Amendment rule in Brandenburg v. Ohio that protected nearly all types of political speech, except that which incited imminent lawless action.
The Warren Court also carved out new protections for people accused of crimes. The Court applied the 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments to the states by incorporating them into the 14th Amendment, providing broad new rights for defendants in criminal cases. In 1961 in Mapp v. Ohio the Court held that evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment must be excluded from all trials. In 1963 it ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that states must provide anyone accused of a felony with a lawyer to assist in the defense. In 1966 the Court defied growing conservative opposition to its expansion of rights of the accused when it declared in Miranda v. Arizona that suspects had to be advised of their constitutional rights when they were put under arrest. In the Miranda case the Court further ruled that courts could not accept suspects' confessions unless they offered them after the police advised them of their rights.
The Warren Court generally denied claims to substantive liberties beyond those specifically named in the Constitution, such as the freedoms of speech and press. In one key decision, however, the Court expanded the substantive due process rights to include a right to privacy. The ruling came in 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the Court struck down a Connecticut ban on the use of contraceptives by married couples. The decision led eight years later to the watershed Roe v. Wade , which overturned state prohibitions on abortion.
F. The Mixed Legacy of the 1970s and 1980s
President Richard Nixon replaced retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren with Warren Earl Burger in 1969. By 1972 Nixon had appointed three more justices. Because Nixon had campaigned vigorously against many of the Warren Court's decisions, it seemed likely that his appointments would shift the Court in a more conservative direction. The Court did issue conservative decisions in some areas, but it also continued to build on the Warren Court's legacy of judicial activism.
The Supreme Court's most explosive decision in this period came in the 1973 case Roe v. Wade, which ruled state prohibitions on abortion unconstitutional. This decision was based on the right to privacy established by the Warren Court. The Court voted 7 to 2 against outlawing abortion, and three of Nixon's justices, including Burger, sided with the majority. In the decades that followed, the Court addressed abortion in several more cases, but continued to uphold the essential premise of individual privacy in Roe. This conception of privacy regarded the right to an abortion as part of the right of a person to do with her body as she wants. The Constitution creates no such right explicitly, but the Court found one in the substantive due process rights guaranteed by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. Critics charged that the Court majority had written its own values into the Constitution, insisting that the framers never intended to give the word liberty such a broad meaning.
The Burger Court also bolstered women's rights by striking down several laws that discriminated against them based on their sex. The Court reasoned that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment prohibited such discrimination. The landmark extension of the Equal Protection Clause to women came in the 1976 case Craig v. Boren, in which the Court ruled that gender-based discrimination must be substantially related to important legislative goals. This standard, although less rigid than the strict scrutiny test applied to racial discrimination, elevated gender to a protected constitutional category. The case also led the Court to be more receptive to claims from other types of groups that they had faced unconstitutional discrimination.
The Supreme Court entered the debate on affirmative action in the 1970s, approving several plans under federal law designed to end discrimination in hiring. In 1978 in the widely discussed reverse-discrimination case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Court upheld the claim of a white applicant to a public medical school that he had been unconstitutionally denied admission solely on the basis of race. Yet in that same case, the sharply divided Court approved the use of race as one of the criteria in selecting applicants. In several later cases, it upheld affirmative action hiring plans designed to foster racial and ethnic diversity in the workplace. It limited affirmative action programs in some others, however.
Under Chief Justice Burger, the Supreme Court showed a conservative streak only in cases involving the procedural rights of criminal suspects and defendants. But even in these cases the Court rarely overruled the Warren Court's expansion of these rights. Instead, the Court either refused to extend the logic of the prior cases to new areas, or it limited the scope of the protections that had been granted. In some instances it seemed even more willing to restrict the power of the states. In Furman v. Georgia in 1972, for example, the Court temporarily struck down the death penalty based on the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. But the Court soon overturned its moratorium on capital punishment after states enacted laws with safeguards against arbitrary sentencing decisions.
G. The Court Since the Late 1980s
The Supreme Court moved in a generally conservative direction after President Ronald Reagan promoted William H. Rehnquist from associate to chief justice in 1986. With three other Reagan appointees usually voting with him, Rehnquist was able to overturn some important precedents. Under Rehnquist, the Court served notice that it would take a dim view of most affirmative action policies. In 1995, for example, it ruled in Adarand Constructors v. Pea that the strict scrutiny test should apply to all race-based legislation, including affirmative action laws that favored disadvantaged groups. The Rehnquist Court also curtailed the possibilities of habeas corpus appeals, making it much more difficult for state prisoners to take appeals on constitutional grounds to the federal courts. The Court continued to limit the procedural rights of individuals accused of crimes and to accord law enforcement officials broad discretion. In the area of personal liberty, in the 1986 case of Bowers v. Hardwick the Court refused to extend the right to privacy and approved a Georgia ban on sodomy. In State of Washington v. Glucksberg in 1997 the Court determined that the federal constitution does not guarantee an individual the choice to end his or her life and upheld a state law prohibiting assisted suicide . In the politically charged debate over census-taking methods, in 1998 the Court ruled that, for purposes of apportioning congressional seats among the states, federal law prohibited the Census Bureau from supplementing its traditional door-to-door surveys with statistical sampling methods.
But during the 1980s and 1990s, the Court also surprised many observers with some relatively liberal opinions. Despite its narrow interpretation of privacy in Bowers v. Hardwick, in 1992 the Court reaffirmed the right to an abortion in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. Under the doctrine of separation of powers, it decided in the 1988 case of Morrison v. Olson to uphold the federal law permitting the appointment of special prosecutors to investigate federal officials (see Independent Counsel Act ).
The Court has also extended the principle of nondiscrimination on the basis of sex and sexual preference. The Court ruled in United States v. Virginia in 1996 that the Virginia Military Institute, a prestigious public military academy, had to admit women. The Court also staked out potential new ground in Romer v. Evans in 1996 when it rejected an amendment to the Colorado state constitution that politically discriminated against lesbians and gays. However, two years later the Court refused to hear a challenge to a voter initiative that barred the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, from passing legislation to protect gays from discrimination.
In 1998 the Court issued a series of rulings regarding sexual harassment that broadly defined an employer's liability (financial responsibility) when supervisory employees harass subordinates. Also that year and in subsequent terms, the Court considered several cases related to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. The Court's decisions in these cases narrowed the class of people who may be considered disabled under the ADA, clarified what constitutes discrimination under the law, and limited the ability of disabled state workers to sue states for employment discrimination under the ADA.
Under Rehnquist, the Court has generally looked unfavorably on federal laws that imposed a burden on the states. In the 1990s and 2000 the Court issued a series of controversial decisions that curtailed federal power and boosted states' rights . In 1992, in New York v. United States, the Court ruled unconstitutional a federal law requiring states to regulate radioactive waste generated within their borders. In 1997, in Printz v. United States, the Court said that the federal government could not compel local law-enforcement officials to conduct background checks of handgun purchasers. In 1999 the Court issued its most sweeping decisions to date on states' rights. In three related cases, the Court decided that states retain a residuary and inviolable sovereignty that gives them broad immunity, in both state and federal courts, from lawsuits brought against them under federal law. In these casesAlden v. Maine, Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank, and College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Boardthe Court found that states cannot be sued for violations of federal laws regulating overtime wages, patent infringement, and false advertising. The three cases, each decided by the same 5 to 4 majority, exposed a deep rift between the Court's conservative and liberal members. In 2000 and 2001 the Court continued its shift toward states' rights by ruling that states cannot be sued for violating a federal law barring age discrimination and by shielding states from certain employment-discrimination lawsuits based on the ADA. However, the Court also ruled that Congress has the authority to prohibit states from selling personal information on drivers' licenses.
In 2000 the Court became embroiled in one of the closest and most contentious presidential elections in U.S. history. In the hours and days following Election Day, November 7, neither Democratic candidate Al Gore nor Republican candidate George W. Bush could claim victory due to an extremely close race in the state of Florida. In order to gain the 270 electoral votes necessary to capture the presidency, each candidate needed to win the Florida popular vote and thus the state's 25 electoral votes. A mandated machine recount of Florida's votes put Bush in the lead by only hundreds of votes out of about 6 million cast, and Gore requested hand recounts of ballots in four heavily Democratic counties. When some of these counties failed to complete their manual recounts by an election certification deadline, Gore filed an election contest to challenge the official certification of Bush as the winner. On December 8 the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide manual recount of undervotes, or ballots on which machines failed to register a vote for president. Bush appealed this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, and on December 9 the Court, by a 5-to-4 vote, halted these manual recounts while it considered the case.
On December 12 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Florida court's decision, effectively sealing Bush's victory. Seven of the nine justices found the court-ordered recount unconstitutional. They concluded that the use of different standards by different counties to determine a legal vote violates a voter's right to equal protectionthat is, the right for all voters to be treated equally. However, the Court split 5 to 4 on the issue of whether to permit further counting under more uniform standards, with the majority ruling that a recount could not be completed constitutionally before a December 12 deadline for the state to choose its electors. The dissenting justices argued that the Court was wrong to involve itself in a state election dispute and that its split decision risked the credibility of the Court.
Since 1869 the number of justices on the Supreme Court of the United States has been fixed at nine. The current Supreme Court consists of left to right, back row: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer; front row: Antonin Scalia, John Paul Stevens, William Rehnquist, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Anthony Kennedy.
Supreme Court Historical Society
John Marshall
Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison. This landmark case established the Court's power of judicial review, which gives the Court authority to review and invalidate government actions that conflict with the U.S. Constitution.
U.S. Supreme Court Justices
Name residence at time of appointment President Appointed by
To Replace Dates of Service
Chief Justices John Jay New York George Washington (new seat) 1789-1795 John Rutledge 1 South Carolina George Washington John Jay 1795 Oliver Ellsworth Connecticut George Washington John Rutledge 1796-1800 John Marshall Virginia John Adams Oliver Ellsworth 1801-1835 Roger Taney Maryland Andrew Jackson John Marshall 1836-1864 Salmon P. Chase Ohio Abraham Lincoln Roger Taney 1864-1873 Morrison Waite Ohio Ulysses Grant Salmon P. Chase 1874-1888 Melville Fuller Illinois Grover Cleveland Morrison Waite 1888-1910 Edward Douglass White Louisiana William Taft Melville Fuller 1910-1921 William Taft Connecticut Warren Harding Edward Douglass White 1921-1930 Charles Evans Hughes New York Herbert Hoover William Taft 1930-1941 Harlan Fiske Stone New York Franklin Roosevelt Charles Evan Hughes 1941-1946 Fred Vinson Kentucky Harry Truman Harlan Stone 1946-1953 Earl Warren California Dwight Eisenhower Fred Vinson 1953-1969 Warren Burger Virginia Richard Nixon Earl Warren 1969-1986 William Rehnquist Virginia Ronald Reagan Warren Burger 1986- Associate Justices William Cushing Massachusetts George Washington (new seat) 1790-1810 John Rutledge South Carolina George Washington (new seat) 1790-1791 James Wilson Pennsylvania George Washington (new seat) 1789-1798 John Blair, Jr. Virginia George Washington (new seat) 1790-1795 James Iredell North Carolina George Washington (new seat) 1790-1799 Thomas Johnson Maryland George Washington John Rutledge 1792-1793 William Paterson New Jersey George Washington Thomas Johnson 1793-1806 Samuel Chase Maryland George Washington John Blair, Jr. 1796-1811 Bushrod Washington Virginia John Adams James Wilson 1799-1829 Alfred Moore North Carolina John Adams James Iredell 1800-1804 William Johnson South Carolina Thomas Jefferson Alfred Moore 1804-1834 Henry Brockholst Livingston New York Thomas Jefferson William Paterson 1807-1823 Thomas Todd Kentucky Thomas Jefferson (new seat) 1807-1826 Gabriel Duvall Maryland James Madison Samuel Chase 1811-1835 Joseph Story Massachusetts James Madison William Cushing 1812-1845 Smith Thompson New York James Monroe Henry Brockholst Livingston 1823-1843 Robert Trimble Kentucky John Quincy Adams Thomas Todd 1826-1828 John McLean Ohio Andrew Jackson Robert Trimble 1830-1861 Henry Baldwin Pennsylvania Andrew Jackson Bushrod Washington 1830-1844 James Wayne Georgia Andrew Jackson William Johnson 1835-1867 Philip Barbour Virginia Andrew Jackson Gabriel Duvall 1836-1841 John Catron Tennessee Martin Van Buren (new seat) 1837-1865 John McKinley Alabama Martin Van Buren (new seat) 1838-1852 Peter Daniel Virginia Martin Van Buren Philip Barbour 1842-1860 Samuel Nelson New York John Tyler Smith Thompson 1845-1872 Levi Woodbury New Hampshire James Polk Joseph Story 1845-1851 Robert Grier Pennsylvania James Polk Henry Baldwin 1846-1870 Benjamin Curtis Massachusetts Millard Fillmore Levi Woodbury 1851-1857 John Campbell Alabama Franklin Pierce John McKinley 1853-1861 Nathan Clifford Maine James Buchanan Benjamin Curtis 1858-1881 Noah Swayne Ohio Abraham Lincoln John McLean 1862-1881 Samuel Miller Iowa Abraham Lincoln Peter Daniel 1862-1890 David Davis Illinois Abraham Lincoln John Campbell 1862-1877 Stephen Field California Abraham Lincoln (new seat) 1863-1897 William Strong Pennsylvania Ulysses Grant Robert Grier 1870-1880 Joseph Bradley New Jersey Ulysses Grant (new seat) 1870-1892 Ward Hunt New York Ulysses Grant Samuel Nelson 1873-1882 John Marshall Harlan Kentucky Rutherford Hayes David Davis 1877-1911 William Woods Georgia Rutherford Hayes William Strong 1881-1887 Stanley Matthews Ohio James Garfield Noah Swayne 1881-1889 Horace Gray Massachusetts Chester Arthur Nathan Clifford 1882-1902 Samuel Blatchford New York Chester Arthur Ward Hunt 1882-1893 Lucius Lamar Mississippi Grover Cleveland William Woods 1888-1893 David Brewer Kansas Benjamin Harrison Stanley Matthews 1890-1910 Henry Brown Michigan Benjamin Harrison Samuel Miller 1891-1906 George Shiras, Jr. Pennsylvania Benjamin Harrison Joseph Bradley 1892-1903 Howell Jackson Tennessee Benjamin Harrison Lucius Lamar 1893-1895 Edward Douglass White Louisiana Grover Cleveland Samuel Blatchford 1894-1910 2 Rufus Peckham New York Grover Cleveland Howell Jackson 1896-1909 Joseph McKenna California William McKinley Stephen Field 1898-1925 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Massachusetts Theodore Roosevelt Horace Gray 1902-1932 William Day Ohio Theodore Roosevelt George Shiras, Jr. 1903-1922 William Moody Massachusetts Theodore Roosevelt Henry Brown 1906-1910 Horace Lurton Tennessee William Taft Rufus Peckham 1910-1914 Charles Evans Hughes New York William Taft David Brewer 1910-1916 Willis Van Devanter Wyoming William Taft Edward Douglass White 1911-1937 Joseph Lamar Georgia William Taft William Moody 1911-1916 Mahlon Pitney New Jersey William Taft John Marshall Harlan 1912-1922 James McReynolds Tennessee Woodrow Wilson Horace Lurton 1914-1941 Louis Brandeis Massachusetts Woodrow Wilson Joseph Lamar 1916-1939 John Clarke Ohio Woodrow Wilson Charles Evans Hughes 1916-1922 George Sutherland Utah Warren Harding John Clarke 1922-1938 Pierce Butler Minnesota Warren Harding William Day 1923-1939 Edward Sanford Tennessee Warren Harding Mahlon Pitney 1923-1930 Harlan Fiske Stone New York Calvin Coolidge Joseph McKenna 1925-1941 2 Owen Roberts Pennsylvania Herbert Hoover Edward Sanford 1930-1945 Benjamin Cardozo New York Herbert Hoover Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 1932-1938 Hugo Black Alabama Franklin Roosevelt Willis Van Devanter 1937-1971 Stanley Reed Kentucky Franklin Roosevelt George Sutherland 1938-1957 Felix Frankfurter Massachusetts Franklin Roosevelt Benjamin Cardozo 1939-1962 William Douglas Connecticut Franklin Roosevelt Louis Brandeis 1939-1975 Frank Murphy Michigan Franklin Roosevelt Pierce Butler 1940-1949 James F. Byrnes South Carolina Franklin Roosevelt James McReynolds 1941-1942 Robert Jackson New York Franklin Roosevelt Harlan Fiske Stone 1941-1954 Wiley Rutledge Iowa Franklin Roosevelt James F. Byrnes 1943-1949 Harold Burton Ohio Harry Truman Owen Roberts 1945-1958 Tom Clark Texas Harry Truman Frank Murphy 1949-1967 Sherman Minton Indiana Harry Truman Wiley Rutledge 1949-1956 John Marshall Harlan New York Dwight Eisenhower Robert Jackson 1955-1971 William J. Brennan, Jr. New Jersey Dwight Eisenhower Sherman Minton 1956-1990 Charles Whittaker Missouri Dwight Eisenhower Stanley Reed 1957-1962 Potter Stewart Ohio Dwight Eisenhower Harold Burton 1958-1981 Byron White Colorado John Kennedy Charles Whittaker 1962-1993 Arthur Goldberg Illinois John Kennedy Felix Frankfurter 1962-1965 Abe Fortas Tennessee Lyndon Johnson Arthur Goldberg 1965-1969 Thurgood Marshall New York Lyndon Johnson Tom Clark 1967-1991 Harry Blackmun Minnesota Richard Nixon Abe Fortas 1970-1994 Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Virginia Richard Nixon Hugo Black 1972-1987 William Rehnquist Arizona Richard Nixon John Marshall Harlan 1972-1986 2 John Paul Stevens Illinois Gerald Ford William Douglas 1975- Sandra Day O'Connor Arizona Ronald Reagan Potter Stewart 1981- Antonin Scalia Virginia Ronald Reagan William Rehnquist 1986- Anthony Kennedy California Ronald Reagan Lewis F. Powell, Jr. 1988- David Souter New Hampshire George Bush William J. Brennan, Jr. 1990- Clarence Thomas Georgia George Bush Thurgood Marshall 1991- Ruth Bader Ginsburg New York Bill Clinton Byron White 1993- Stephen Breyer Massachusetts Bill Clinton
Harry Blackmun
1994- 1) Senate did not confirm appointment. 2) Promoted to chief justice.
John Marshall Statue by William Wetmore Story
Displayed on the ground floor of the Supreme Court of the United States
(photographed by Diane Williams, Curator's Office, Supreme Court of the United States, 1986)
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This site of the Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas at Austin provides links to legal history resources of courts, universities, and research libraries.
H-LAW
H-LAW is an on line discussion list devoted to legal and constitutional history. The H-Law web site contains logs of H-LAW discussions, book reviews, and links to the American Society for Legal History.
"Supreme Court of the United States," Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
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The U. S. Constitution
