Sample Essay On US Supreme Court Justices

Supreme Court Justices are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life tenure and can only be removed for good cause. While Justices are given life tenure to eliminate potential biased or political motivations, the appointment process of a Supreme Court Justice is extremely political. The incumbent President almost always nominates a candidate who is a member of his same political party. This is because the President desires a Supreme Court Justice who will uphold the President’s policies and objectives in court if such policies are challenged. The composition of the Court is usually divided between Democrats and Republicans in a 5-4 or 4-5 fashion, which means that many opinions containing highly politicized and controversial questions are narrowly decided by a margin of one vote forming the majority.
US Supreme Court Justices have the authority to state the supreme “law of the land.” The law is what the Supreme Court says it is, and no branch of government can challenge the Supreme Court’s opinion. A Supreme Court Justice who is the “swing vote” like Justice Kennedy can be the deciding factor in many important cases. But taken individually, Supreme Court Justices do not possess a tremendous amount of influence. The Supreme Court can only decide questions of law that reach the Court. Therefore, unlike Congress or the President, the Supreme Court has no authority to prospectively respond to and address current issues and needs of the public. The Court is reactionary, meaning that it only has authority to decide the narrow question that a particular case raises. If the Court wishes to decide a particular question of law, it must wait until the right case is presented to it. This can often take many years, or, such a case never arises because the issue has never been litigated.