Week 3 Post

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 SCOTUS Review

 

For this blog-post, I will be discussing what I have learned/thought was interesting in the SCOTUS history reading. One thing that I thought was humorous was how the first Supreme Court assembly was supposed to take place on February 1st, 1790, but it had to be postponed due to transportation issues. Imagine a bunch of old men being stuck in horse traffic, looking at their pocket watches horridly as they realize they will be late to a major event in American history. Oddly enough, it happened the next day where the development of organizational procedures took place. Sticking with what was funny, in the next paragraph, we learn that the first ever case, West v. Barnes, was an insignificant case between a farmer and a family he owed money too. Despite this case being incredibly boring, for some reason this case sticks with me a lot more than the significant cases, such as Miranda v. Arizona or Marbury v. Madison.

All jokes aside, I was curious as to why the number of seats in the Supreme Court fluctuated so much until 1869. After doing some outside research, I found that the reason Congress dropped the number of seats to five was because, according to NBC, "Federalists tried to deny incoming President Thomas Jefferson the chance to fill a seat that was expected to soon be vacant by reducing the court’s size from six justices (the original complement under the Judiciary Act of 1789) to five. But once Jefferson was sworn in, his partisans in the new Congress quickly restored the seat — and Jefferson filled it. (Vladeck)" Similarly, I also learned that President FDR tried to increase the number seats to fifteen in 1937, but his own party went against him, shooting down the proposal.

 Finally, focusing on the Supreme Court Justices, I did not know that John Marshall served as a chief justice for 34 years, which is the longest term out of any of the judges. During these 34 years, Marshall defined the Supreme Court’s power to evaluate and "rule on the constitutionality of federal laws enacted by Congress (history.com)", as laid out in Marbury v. Madison.

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