While reading the article about the Supreme Court, I learned multiple different facts that I did not know before. For example, I did not know that the Court had its first meeting on February 2nd, 1790. Furthermore, I was not aware that they were first set to assemble on February 1st, but due to transportation issues, had to push back the meeting until the next day. Lastly, I did not know that the first meeting was held at the Merchants Exchange Building in New York City. It’s interesting to think about how something so prominent in American History took place not even 30 minutes away from my hometown!
Although I believe all the information in this article is informative and important, I found the sub-article: “Steps the Supreme Court Takes to Reach a Decision,” the most necessary takeaway point. Personally, I have been learning aspects about the Supreme Court in almost every history or political class I have taken since middle school. However, I have never truly been taught or understood the entire process. The article starts off with a table of contents that states the 7 steps that are taken to come to a fair, respectable conclusion. The steps consist of: 1. Accept the Case 2. File Briefs 3. Oral Arguments 4. Conference 5. Assign Opinions 6. Circulate Drafts of the Opinions and 7. The Opinions are Made Public. Each section of the article provides around 3-4 hefty paragraphs explaining how each step works.
The most surprising thing I learned was through the sub-article: “Steps the Supreme Court Takes to Reach a Decision.” In the first step, Accept the Case, the article mentions how the Supreme Court can only accept between 100-150 cases a year out of the 7,000 cases. First off, I was super shocked that they accept that many cases in 365 days. I would have thought the number would’ve been lower, perhaps around 50-70. Secondly, I was also not aware that the Supreme Court is asked to review 7,000 cases per year. Again, I would’ve guessed the number would have been much lower considering there are lower courts that could have come to a conclusion about specific cases. In the article, it states that the Supreme Court is more likely to accept cases when the lower courts were in a disagreement, which makes perfect sense. However, I would have expected for the disagreements to not be as common.
When watching the video about the Supreme Court, my mindset changed about how I viewed it. When someone mentioned the “Supreme Court,” it was always a very intimidating term to me. It appeared as this scary, rigid and stern group of people who you definitely hope to not encounter at any point during your life. Although some of that may be very true, this video helped me put the Supreme Court into perspective. At the end of the day, the justices on the Supreme Court are just like any other human. They have feelings, opinions, emotions and empathy. Obviously, they have a very difficult job, as the decisions they conclude on can make or break peoples’ lives. However, we tend to forget that the men and women serving on the Supreme Court are just like the rest of us.
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