Mauricio Rosales American Government 03/05/2018

“the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the
political rights of the constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure
them.” –Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist papers.

Why the Supreme Court is as political as the other powers of the State?

The Supreme Court is the Head of the Judiciary Power in the American Government,

and it serves to appeal over federal issues concerning both the government and the

federal courts across the country. The Supreme Court has the power to interpret the

U.S. Constitution and its amendments, as well to dictate when a law violates the

constitutional principles. Such role seems unharmful at first sight, but it is highly

powerful as the past decisions taken by the Supreme Court had determine the course of

the whole nation. Thus, the framer intended to make the Supreme Court an apolitical

institution of the state to prevent the use of the powers granted to the former against the

people. However, in a Country with a history of political polarization, the people that

compose the Supreme Court cannot be exempt of their own political preferences and

prejudices, so the Supreme Court cannot be an apolitical power of the state.

First of all, the Supreme court cannot be an apolitical power of the state because it is

composed by people, and they tend to be bias by nature even unconsciously, and so do

the judges even in the Supreme Court due to the fact that their judge is based in their

own ideology as individual. One can see this in the decision rule by the court in the year

2000 Bush v Gore, when Albert Gore asked for a recount in the ballots in the state of

Florida, but the Supreme Court did not grant it. The Professor in Law Alan Dershowitz

commented “The decision in the Florida election case may be ranked as the single most

corrupt decision in Supreme Court history, because it is the only one that I know of

where the majority justices decided as they did because of the personal identity and
political affiliation of the litigants. This was cheating, and a violation of the judicial

oath.”1. Thus, one can analyze that the Court acted in favor of one candidate over the

other.

In second place, the Supreme Court is a political power because it is appointment by

the president, so they have partisan preferences in the government decisions as it was

shown during the Great Depression and the Government of the President Franklin

Delano Roosevelt, and how he transform the judicial branch into a liberal power house

which he used to maintain all his projects during the era. One of the strategies he used

was the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937(which intended to increase the number

of judges in the Supreme Court, favoring FDR.), and, even though it failed to pass, its

psychological effects were so strong that became a coercion tool against the Supreme

Court which support FDR’s projects.

Finally, the Supreme Court, being a Federal institution, usually the favor the power of

the Union over the States, even though the Supreme Court is careful about how to

approach to the issues to prevent the States to disobey the Court’s resolutions. One of

the most recent resolution is United States v Arizona, where even though the Court

dictate one of the four propositions as constitutional (this being the guarantees of the

power to the local police to investigate a stopped person about its legal status) and the

other three were struck down with the reason of attempting the liberties of the people.

To conclude, the Supreme Court has big responsibilities, but also the power that is

granted by the constitution is such that without the check of external communities can

make the Supreme Court to deliberate biased to the party the Judges are appointed
from. Thus, the importance to make a review and reform to the power granted by the

constitution to the Supreme Court and the way its officers are originated.

Cited Works

1. Dershowitz, Alan. Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election

2000, pages 174 and 198 (Oxford U. Press 2001).