in chapter 13 we're looking at the uh mainly the supreme court almost exclusively the supreme court for this chapter and our court system is all about at least theoretically should be all about our system of justice and this is the symbolic representation of the concept of justice this is lady justice and i'm starting off with this question why is she blindfolded now this is going to lead to a discussion of how the supreme court is orientated towards american politics how the supreme court is structured because these things are definitely connected so why is she blindfolded anybody know why have you heard the expression that justice is blind or justice should be blind this is a concept that justice uh should not be discriminatory or bias the justice needs to be the exact opposite that is uh objective neutral fair and we see this also represented in the scales that she's holding right the decisions should be made on the evidence on the weight of the evidence in other words in all cases not by you know the color of someone's skin not based on how much money they have or don't have in their bank account not based on their sex or gender justice should be objective and only related to the facts so the fact that lady justice is blindfolded is leading us in that direction right again justice needs to be objective uh not discriminatory now one of the major tools that allows our supreme court justices to be hopefully objective non-partisan uh um not accountable to public opinion is the fact that once they're on the court then this is not only for supreme court justices this is also for federal court judges that they serve for life the framers of the constitution understood why justices should serve for life once they are on the court in other words even a president who put them on the court or appointed them to the court can't take them off uh congress cannot remove them outside of the process of impeachment and no supreme court justice in the history of the united states has ever been impeached just like no president in the history of the united states has been successfully impeached so they're there and they serve for life so that they can be hopefully fair objective unbiased neutral non-discriminatory they can make decisions based on evidence based on facts based on science uh rather than again the color of someone's skin their wealth uh anything else their party preference that could be used uh to rule against someone so the structure of the court mirrors or in some ways reflects i should say reflects uh the overarching principle that justice should be objective fair neutral and unbiased so in two places the constitution describes courts other than the supreme court as inferior i believe in article 1 section 8 it says something to the effect of in inferior or lesser tribunals uh in article three it also declares the exact same power of congress to create inferior courts to that of the supreme court now why does the constitution say this in two places why is this necessary it's to get across the point that any court in our country no matter what it is it must and can only be inferior to the supreme court in other words the supreme court represents the highest law of the land the supreme court is often called the court of last resort that is once the supreme court makes a decision there is nowhere else for the litigants in that case to turn to there's no intergalactic court there's no you know world core there's no court in our country that has a a a higher jurisdiction if you will than the supreme court the supreme court's responsibilities to the law you guys should know this at this point in the semester is to interpret the law remember the legislative branch creates the law the executive branch uh implements and and uh uh enforces the law it is the judicial branch then interprets the law the that doesn't sound powerful right okay so they get to interpret the law that almost sounds like an academic exercise however when you couple with their responsibility of interpreting the law with the major tool that they use to do so judicial review you see that the responsibility of the court does indeed embed it with extreme power judicial review is the check of all checks remember judicial review allows the supreme court to invalidate laws and other actions by every other branch or level of government including local governments local city councils all the way up to the us president as well as the us congress so judicial review allows the supreme court to check any law that is created by any other branch or level of government as well as any other actions that they take so interpretation and the power to declare actions either legal aka constitutional or illegal aka unconstitutional is serious power that the court can use this is probably the most famous supreme court case in u.s history you know maybe if it's not the most famous it's the second most famous to roe versus wade uh this is the case of brown versus board of education from 1954. and it is a great example of a lot of things uh of our turn away from legalized racial segregation brown vs board of education declared that racial segregation and public education was indeed unconstitutional as a violation of the 14th amendment to the u.s constitution uh but brown versus board of education is also a great example of judicial review the power of the court to not only declare state laws unconstitutional but the power of the court to declare one of its own earlier decisions to be wrong and in this case brown overturned a supreme court case from 1896 called plessy versus ferguson now plessy versus ferguson is also an extremely famous case a well-known case even though it's a hundred and you know 20 something years old because plessy versus ferguson in 1896 declared separate but equal that is this is the supreme court case that legalized for state governments and local governments the option of racial segregation the supreme court saying that yes people can be separated from one another based on race aka the color of their skin the only caveat to this was that if a state or locality was going to separate black and white people or more broadly speaking people of color from whites that both of those groups had to have access to the same public facilities the same public services so if you were gonna separate blacks and whites if you had white schools you also had to have black schools if you had you know movie theaters that served only white audiences you had to have movie theaters that also served african americans so this was the ridiculous precedent set in plessy versus ferguson that was at least in terms of public education declared unconstitutional in brown versus board of education so this is really the first major pillar of racial segregation discrimination oppression falling in the united states public education racial segregation and once this precedent which is something we'll go over later once this precedent was established we see afterwards racial segregation falling in multiple other areas so this case again is historic um it's the first major pillar of racial segregation that falls uh and brown really does change uh at least race relations and our government's willingness to tolerate and to allow racial discrimination and oppression to exist legally uh it really starts to put an end to that 1954 we know this 10 years later in 1964 uh congress passes the civil rights act which attempts to end racial discrimination not only in public education but also in public contracting as well as public employment so brown was 10 years before the civil rights act of 64. and it is absolutely one of the most important cases in american history i don't want to spend too much time on this slide the slide is just showing us that the state court system which is the system that is there to decide and try state laws right when if you break a law if it's a state law you go to the state court system if it's a federal law you go to the federal court system and remember we have mirrored systems for all three branches that is within this 50 states we have a legislative branch we have an executive branch and we have a judicial branch so we also have well state courts that mirror the federal courts uh the point of this is that both of them terminate at the u.s supreme court again the court of last resort the highest law of the land so if you work your way through the court system the final stop after your state supreme court is still the us supreme court if you're in the federal court system and you appeal whatever losing a case uh you also end up at the u.s supreme court system the district courts of the federal system are trial courts this is where you have juries once you get out of that initial level either trial courts in the state court system or district courts in the federal system you're no longer dealing with with juries once you get past that into your appellate courts your appellate levels um you're just dealing straight with judges who make the decisions uh in these cases and that is no different with the us supreme court nine justices on the u.s supreme court and we'll talk about the politics of the court shortly so this slide is a little outdated in these nine judges because two of these have changed and we'll talk about one of the big changes coming up uh that top name antonin scalia uh passed away in 2016 in february he has been replaced and if you look at anthony kennedy right below him he retired and has also been replaced so it's a little outdated but that's not the point the point of the slide is that when you look at our supreme court today a few things should be noted one right now we have the single most diverse court in u.s history by far one of two african americans that has ever served on the court is serving now that is clarence thomas you can see that third name on this on this chart three of the four women who have ever served on the court are serving now that of course is ruth bader ginsburg sonia sotomayor and elena kagan now clarence thomas second african-american the first was thurgood marshall uh the first woman to serve on the court was sandra day o'connor she retired god i want to say somewhere around 2010 but i could be a little bit off in that but again the most diverse court that we've ever had in american history we have now um although when you look at where they come from professionally and educationally speaking there is not much diversity in the least that is all of our supreme court justices were educated in ivy league schools uh most of them harvard or yale the you know the i would have to look at the new justices but at least this group all harvard all yale with the exception of ginsburg went to colombia also an ivy league school they also come from the same background professionally that is they were all working in the appellate or circuit courts of the federal court systems the exception here is elena kagan who came from the solicitor general office the solicitor general is the lawyer who represents the president and the administration elena kagan by the way was the first woman in american history to be solicited solicitor general of the us she is now on the supreme court much in the same way that thurgood marshall the first african-american justice was also the first african-american solicitor general in us history before being nominated to the supreme court so depending on what you're looking at with regards to our current court you're either going to see a lot of diversity as far as especially sex a little bit of diversity with regards to race and almost no diversity with regards to their professional experience and educational backgrounds another thing that i'd like to make note of the constitution does not describe supreme court justices at all remember the constitution does have a brief list of descriptions for who can serve as a elected representative and who can serve as the president remember to be in the house or the senate you need to be for the house 25 years old for the senate 30 years old for the presidency 35 years old for the house you need to be seven years a citizen for the senate nine years a citizen for the president a natural born citizen for the house and the senate you need to live in the state that you represent all of these requirements are in the constitution yet with regards to supreme court justices zero requirements it does not say that they need to be lawyers it doesn't say they need to be judges before becoming federal court judges or supreme court justices there's no description of these people why is that anybody have an idea why that is why would the framers put descriptions of our elected representatives but not our supreme court justices the reason is is that supreme court justices and pharaoh judges are appointed by the president and approved by the senate that is there are checks already built within how they get onto the bench there are no such checks for our elected representatives uh regarding how they get their offices right they are basically voted in by the people by citizens so for supreme court justices the president has to nominate them the senate has to approve because there are checks within the process that allows people to serve the framers didn't feel it necessary to describe who these people have to be in other words if the president nominates somebody who is not qualified the framers were perfectly willing to allow the senate to make judgment to say no this person is not qualified so no we will not approve them and the senate will even in this day still do this uh a senate will say no even to a president of their own party uh if they feel that the president has nominated somebody who is not qualified to serve on the supreme court so we know why the constitution does not describe these people it's quite frankly because the senate has to approve of them first so the responsibility quality control in other words rests in the hands of the us senate in this next couple of slides i want to tell you a story that illustrates the partisanship that has grown uh to infect essentially the supreme court and this is not good you guys if you look at public approval for the supreme court it is down it is low it might be at its lowest point ever you know i haven't looked at past statistics to be able to say that definitively but it is low and one of the reasons why it's going down is because the supreme court is now viewed by the public many people to be partisan just like congress partisan just like the president that is people believe that the supreme court is showing the polarization that they see in congress and people don't like that and this is sad because again the supreme court is orientated differently to politics right they serve for life i talked about this earlier they serve for life for a reason so they don't have to care about public opinion they don't have to care about partisan politics they don't have to be beholden even to the president or the senate that allows them to serve once they are on the court they can do whatever they want to do this is to preserve the integrity of the court the independence of the court to make sure that they are allowed to rule based on facts based on principle objectively fairly um with justice in mind so when you look at the fight that i'm about to illustrate it helps us understand why the public might view the court as just another extension of either the republican or the democratic parties now you will never hear a supreme court justice refer to themselves as a democrat or any of their colleagues as democrats or republicans the ethics of the law profession does not allow them to be members of a political party so they will often be described as either liberals or conservatives in terms of their ideology and that's the terms that i'm going to use they are not democrats or republicans you guys do not get that idea but they are liberal or conservative so those are the the phrases i'm going to be using now in 2016 in february antonin scalia unexpectedly dies while in asleep basically of a heart attack while on a hunting trip in texas so he now needs to be replaced the supreme court has nine members if somebody retires or dies they are replaced so 2016 february the president in office is barack obama so he has the power to appoint scalia's replacement scalia is the most conservative at least when he was serving was the most conservative justice on the supreme court and the court that you're looking at now uh if you put scalia back into the picture was roughly split four conservatives to four liberals with that justice in the front row second from the right that's anthony kennedy justice kennedy was essentially considered a moderate he was moderately conservative he was more conservative than liberal but he was considered a moderate nonetheless so you see that the ideological balance of the court basically is even you have four liberals four conservatives and then justice kennedy more conservative than liberal but still considered to be in the middle the swing vote if you will so scalia's replacement is an important issue and we know that again it is the president of the united states at this point barack obama during the presidential election of 2016 who is still in office and who should be able to replace scalia now we know that barack obama's president because he's a liberal and he's a democrat that he's going to a point to replace the conservative scalia a liberal justice of his pig and this is what he tries to do but he was not successful so here we see why president obama was not allowed to replace antonin scalia with the justice of his choice pictured here in the middle merrick garland so what happened well for the 11 months that barack obama was still in office as president united states he should have had the power to replace antonin scalia but remember any presidential nominee to the supreme court must be approved by the senate and who controlled the senate in 2016 who still controls the senate to this day the republican party and the leader of the majority the leader of the republican party mitch mcconnell did not want president obama to replace scalia with a liberal because remember think about it the court was four liberals to four conservatives with one justice in the middle and barack obama been able to as president replace scalia a die-hard conservative with a liberal justice the ideological balance of the court would have been in favor of the liberals at that point you would have had five liberals three conservatives and one justice in the middle that's justice kennedy so mitch mcconnell and the republicans who ran the senate said no straight up we are not going to allow president obama to replace antonin scalia now this was extremely controversial no president in american history had been blocked by an opposing party for 11 months in their power to replace a supreme court justice no senate had ever denied a president this power for this length of time the other odd part about this was that republicans had said already before all of this happened that if president obama was allowed to replace another supreme court justice that a perfect pick the republicans would be in favor of would be a justice like merrick garland they literally named him specifically republicans did saying that he would be not only qualified but palatable for republicans because even though he's a liberal he's not far left he's moderately liberal liberal he's closer to the middle than to again the extremes of the left so president obama essentially called their bless he nominated a person that republican leadership had already said was acceptable to the republicans in the senate merrick garland however mitch mcconnell leading the senate and other senate republicans simply refused to even allow merrick garland to be interviewed by the senate judiciary committee so not only did they not vote on him he wasn't even invited to the senate to talk to the judiciary committee that approves nominees before the entire senate gets to vote they absolutely stonewalled president obama's choice mitch mcconnell said this very publicly during the presidential election of 2016. whoever wins 2016 will be able to successfully replace scalia a lot of americans you guys shamedly i would say were not aware that this was part of what was happening in 2016. in other words we were not just electing a president we were electing the president that would be deciding the ideological balance of the court itself and again this is because most americans don't care about this stuff they don't value this stuff they don't pay attention they'd rather watch sports follow celebrities uh then stay abreast of what's happening in our political system and we know what happened in 2016 president trump is elected into office and he gets to replace scalia rather than president obama and he replaces scalia as you'll see with exactly what we would expect him to replace him with another conservative here we see in the upper right hand corner president trump's pick to replace antonin scalia that is conservative justice neil gorsuch now you guys this this this is so important but this was so controversial and not because gorsuch himself is controversial not at all uh eminently qualified you know almost everyone would agree looking at him he has the experience the education so on and so forth he's not controversial in and of itself it was the process that allowed him to be nominated and approved by the senate that was controversial because again president obama was blocked stonewalled by senate republicans from being able to replace scalia for an unprecedented 11 months this was a gambit by senate republicans and it worked a republican won the presidency so now a republican is replacing scalia and president trump did exactly what anybody would expect him to do he replaced a conservative with a conservative thus holding the ideological balance of the court for the conservative majority so here we see president trump uh increasing the conservative majority on the court anthony kennedy justice kennedy who was that moderate member of the court more conservative than than liberal but moderate nonetheless that middle swing vote in the court between the four conservatives and the four liberals kennedy retired after uh after scalia passes away kennedy retires so donald trump gets to not only replace kennedy i mean scalia who president obama should have replaced president trump also then gets to replace the moderate vote kennedy on the court and he does so with pictured here on the upper right brett kavanaugh brett kavanaugh is not a moderate he is a conservative so not only did president trump get to replace scalia which should have been done by president obama president trump also gets to further increase the conservative majority on the court instead of being 4-4 with one moderate in the middle the court is now solid solidly five conservatives and four liberals so there is no longer a swing vote there there's no longer a moderate on the court this could be a problem especially for the chief justice john roberts pictured uh middle front row right the court bears the name of this of the chief justice so right now the supreme court is called the roberts court the question is on a lot of people's minds will robert roberts become the new moderate will he take kennedy's spot between the ideological left and right wings of the court now why would he do that considering he's a conservative well he would do that to try and salvage the integrity and independence of the court to salvage the public perception that the court is non-partisan and this is difficult to do but again this is a serious question you know does john roberts want the court that bears his name to be considered a totally partisan ideologically polarized court well of course not of course not and he has said as much publicly that the court is independent of the republican and democratic parties independent of the president independent of congress it is its own place or own piece of its own branch so there is a question will roberts move to the middle in order to mitigate the partisan or i'm sorry ideological battle that is taking place and will continue to take place on the court looking out the court has changed over roughly the last 50 years or so we can see that on this on this slide that we've had one real truly liberal court in american history this is called the warren court this is a court that earl warren is chief justice from 19 i believe 54 up until 1968. from there you can see that the liberal the number of liberals on the court slowly shrinks uh from a very solid six liberals during the warren court which gives them the ideological balance of the court down to three in the burger chord and then back up to uh four in the robbers court well we know now that that four in the roberts court four liberals is now down to three because ruth bader ginsburg passed away a couple of months ago and was replaced by justice uh amy coney barrett so the liberal wing has been at least compared to the warren court has been hollowed out quite a bit they've lost essentially half of their members when looking at this block ideologically if you look at the moderate block it was very strong during the burger court as you can see and the moderate block has all but disappeared remember what i said in the last slide anthony kennedy retired he was replaced by the conservative brett kavanaugh so the moderate wing although you know for the last 50 years was never really that strong is now completely uh gone and then if you look at the conservative wing of the court only one justice considered conservative during the the end of the war in court the conservative wing has steadily grown and now the supreme court with the addition only what last month of amy coney buried was it earlier this month i have to leave the day anyways with the addition of amy coney barrett who replaced justice ruth bader ginsburg we know kennedy was replaced by brett kavanaugh and uh justice scalia was also replaced with a conservative uh that the conservative wing of the court has increased substantially now the court is going to be six conservatives and three liberals so basically a flip of the warren court uh in in terms of the number of liberals that dominated the warren court the conservative wing of the court now and the roberts court has that same number six so it's gonna be six conservatives three liberals which means that even if roberts as i mentioned in the previous slide even if roberts moves to the middle people are also saying that maybe brett kavanaugh might be a little bit more moderate than people gave him credit for before he became a supreme court justice even if roberts moves to the middle he can still roberts with briar sotomayor and kagan is still only four justices they could easily be overtaken uh on any case by the six or remaining five conservatives so even if roberts moves to the middle we don't know if that's going to make much of a difference with regards to the ideological balance of the court and that's because again of the newest addition to the court conservative justice amy coney barrett maybe just maybe chief justice roberts as well as brett kavanaugh might be more or at least closer to a moderate ideological position than people would have expected before before they were actually on the court by the way neil gorsuch also one of president trump's supreme court picks has also ruled with the liberals a few times two times i believe in uh 2020. so gorsuch also is not voting or writing opinions strictly from a conservative standpoint so it's going to be really interesting to see how this court uh how this court starts deciding cases or or continues to decide cases because if you look at it purely ideologically it looks like the liberal wing of the court has no chance but remember the court is independent these justices can rule in any way that they essentially decide so you know you're not going to see just a strict six to three vote for the cases that garner the most public attention we've already seen roberts rule with the liberals we've seen gorsuch rule with the liberals we've also seen kavanaugh rule with the liberals so again you know it is is easy and cutting and cut and dry as this can look on paper uh the court is never ever that predictable so ideologically gives us a fairly good idea of how they might rule but it is by no means a definitive read on a case-by-case basis this is a picture of the newest justice on the supreme court justice amy coney barrett she's trump's third supreme court justice pick she is ideologically conservative i actually looked it up she was confirmed october 26 of this year so i i think i said maybe in the last slide was it this month you know it was late last month late october uh a really you know quick choice and confirmation she sailed through her confirmation through the uh judiciary committee in the senate as well as the full vote of the senate which is what's required for any uh supreme court nominee so she is now on the court uh she has increased the conservative wing of the court and her confirmation was extremely controversial because the the logic that senate republicans used to block uh president obama's choice after the sudden death of antonin scalia the republicans said that in an election year the american people should choose the president and then that president once they're inaugurated into office should pick the supreme court just as well they believe that when barack obama was the president but they did not use that a principle when uh justice ruth bader ginsburg passed away they got amy coney baron on the court extremely quickly so it was really hypocritical of the senate republicans but you know they had the power to block barack obama to senate republicans and they did so they used the power that they have they had the power this time uh sharing the ideology of the president to get his pick through and they did this is what power is this is what power real power allows you to do so people are up in arms because of the just blatant absolute hypocrisy of senate republicans however you know you look at it from the perspective of power they they use to the fullest extent the power that they have in the senate the power to approve presidential appointments and it's it's hard to fault them for it you know at one level it is a a horrible discourtesy what they did to president obama it was terrible and at the other level you can understand it because again they have the majority they get to say what goes on in the senate extremely controversial i think the majority of the american people when surveyed said that they didn't agree with the senate republicans in doing this and i think part of that is the recognition that they blocked president obama's choice uh using that logic that again it was a presidential election year we were in the middle almost at the end of a presidential election and they still found time to get amy coney barrett confirmed to the court so power is what it is and the senate republicans have used it ruthlessly to stack uh not only the supreme court but also federal courts district courts as well as circuit courts and this also goes back strangely enough let me just finish this off here real quick this also goes back to the presidency of barack obama the senate republicans not only refused to confirm his choice for the supreme court the gentleman's name is slipping my mind but they also blocked a massive number of federal court judges that barack obama should have been nominating they they would not confirm not only his supreme court justice but also his district and circuit court judges as well so one of the reasons why president trump has been able to get so many judges in the district and circuit courts as well as supreme court picks is because these seats a lot of them in the lower courts were open because barack obama could not get his nominees through so you know the senate republicans have been again ruthless with that power ruthless with that control and they have used it to stack the judicial branch with conservative justice across the federal system you