Supreme Court

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT was created on September 24, 1789, by Article III, Paragraph 1, of the U.S. Constitution. Article III, Paragraph 1, simply provides that “the judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” The Supreme Court is the highest tribunal in the nation for all cases and controversies arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States, serves as final arbiter of the law, and functions as guardian and interpreter of the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court consists of one chief justice and a number of associate justices predetermined by Congress, and is currently fixed at eight. Justices are [Page 885]nominated by the president, require confirmation by the Senate, and serve for life. Consequently, when vacancies on the court have become available, virtually all presidents have attempted to “pack” the court with justices whose political ideology is consistent with their administration's political agenda, thereby influencing the court in either a liberal or conservative direction. When the Republican Party endorsed a constitutional amendment limiting abortion, for example, President Ronald Reagan sought to appoint conservative justices who respected “traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.”

Typically, an entire court era is described in terms of its political preferences, whether conservative or liberal. Historically, conservative courts have been primarily concerned with preserving existing institutions against the threat of radical change, view affirmative action policies skeptically, and are generally reluctant to expand the fundamental rights of equal protection law. Liberal courts, however, have tended to rule in favor of individuals claiming a denial of civil liberties such as the right to privacy; freedom of speech, religion, and press; and illegal discrimination. Furthermore, liberal courts have favored expanding the rights of the criminally accused.

The Warren Court (1953–69), for example, has been labeled liberal for its transformation of constitutional law and American society by giving minorities victories they had been unable to obtain from reluctant legislatures and obstinate executives. Consequently, the Warren Court significantly altered the legal system by departing from the earlier courts' conservative decisions, implementing the largest expansion of civil rights and civil liberties in the nation's history.

Earl Warren assumed the position of chief justice at the opening of the October 1953 term with the court confronting one of the most significant issues in American history, the constitutionality of racial segregation. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the court invalidated racial segregation within the public school system. Warren, delivering the opinion of the court, emphasized the impact that racial segregation had on children and thus triggered the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. The Warren Court captured national attention with its highly controversial decision in Brown, which served as a preview to the court's commitment to social justice and protection of the individual against the state. The Warren Court's greatest controversy, however, emerged when it adopted a series of broad rulings protecting criminal defendants. In 1961, the Supreme Court began to exert strict control over criminal justice policy by applying specific requirements of the Bill of Rights to the states by means of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Mapp v. Ohio(1961), the court declared that the exclusionary rule, which prohibits evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment as inadmissible in federal proceedings, is applicable to state courts. In Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), the most famous of the Warren Court cases, the court extended the Sixth Amendment right to counsel to state proceedings. In Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the court declared that at a minimum, a person accused of a criminal offense must be informed of his right to remain silent and to the presence of either a retained or appointed attorney prior to a police interrogation.

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