Transcript The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court
AP Government - 2012
United States Constitution
– Article III, Section 1
• “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.”
Article I, Section 3,
Clause 6
• “The Senate shall have the sole
power to try all
Impeachments…When the President
of the United States is tried, the
Chief Justice shall preside…”
Article II, Section 2,
Clause 2
• “(H)e (the President) shall nominate,
and by and with the Advice and
Consent of the Senate, shall appoint
Ambassadors, other public Ministers
and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme
Court…”
Federalist No. 78 by
Alexander Hamilton
• “Whoever attentively considers the
different departments of power
must perceive, that, in a government
in which they are separated from
each other, the Judiciary, from the
nature of its function, will always be
the least dangerous to the political
rights of the Constitution; because it
will be least in a capacity to annoy or
injure them.”
Federalist No. 78
Continued
• “The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but
holds the sword of the community. The
legislature not only commands the purse, but
prescribes the rules by which the duties and
rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The
Judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over
either the sword or the purse; no direction either
of the strength or of the wealth of the society;
and can take no active resolution whatever. It may
truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL,
but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend
upon the aid of the executive arm even for the
efficacy of its judgment.”
Current Supreme Court
Justices
•
Top row (left to right):
Associate Justice Sonia
Sotomayor, Associate Justice
Stephen G. Breyer, Associate
Justice Samuel A. Alito, and
Associate Justice Elena
Kagan. Bottom row (left to
right): Associate Justice
Clarence Thomas, Associate
Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief
Justice John G. Roberts,
Associate Justice Anthony
Kennedy, and Associate
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Conservative Justices
• Conservative
Justices
• John Roberts
(Chief Justice)
• Antonin Scalia
• Clarence Thomas
• Samuel Alito
• Anthony Kennedy
•
•
•
•
Liberal Justices
Sonia Sotomayor
Stephen Breyer
Ruth Bader
Ginsburg
• Elena Kagan
Alexis de Tocqueville’s
quote
• “The peace, the prosperity, and the
very existence of the Union are
nestled in the hands of … federal
judges. Without them the
Constitution would be a dead letter.”