Introduction
The Supreme Court of the United States is one of the most fundamentally important aspects of the US government's system of checks and balances. While members of the Supreme Court are nominated by the executive, and the size and structure of the Supreme Court is generally controlled by the legislative branch, the Supreme Court itself has the authority to check the actions of the other two branches of government; to declare laws made by both the legislative branch and the executive branch unconstitutional. On a more basic level, however, the Supreme Court analyzes and makes decisions on court cases; centered around the purpose of interpreting law.
My Thoughts
In general, I think that the Supreme Court has a good structure. However, I think it would be interesting to explore the idea of having a fixed number of supreme court justices; the number of individuals serving as president cannot be changed, what's the purpose of having a variable number Supreme Court justices? Unlike the legislator which is representative of the different states, the purpose of the Supreme Court is to interpret the constitution (not to have equal representation for each state). However, since the constitution does permit a fixed number of justices, an amendment would have to be made in order to constitutionally "fix" the number of supreme court justices.
Another one of my thoughts concerning the Supreme Court, and more generally the Federal Government by in large, is the idea that they are pretty inefficient. I believe it would be intriguing to consider ways to increase the efficiency of our federal government. Lastly, this concept applies to all of of government, but I would also like to see an honest audit of government spending. If businesses can be audited, than I think it is equal, if not more important that the American people have access to auditing the spending of the American Government. While budgets are released to the public, and there is even a Government Accountability Office, we sure don't see any reductions in the governments waste of tax payer dollars year after year. (Ironically, the only institution that has the resources to fully audit government spending is the government itself. That's like Facebook employing their own employees auditors. I couldn't imagine any issues with that).
History of the Supreme Court
The supreme court first met on February 2, 1790, where the justices focused on working out organizational and procedural issues. The first case argued by the Supreme Court was West V. Barnes; an uneventful financial case concerning an individual who owed a family money. It wasn't until 1803 that the the Supreme Court was established as a powerful branch of Government under Chief justice John Marshall and the case Marbury v. Madison.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that studying the Supreme Court further has reinforced the importance of our governments system of checks and balances. I am a believer that the constitution of this national actually matters, similar to the Bible for a Christian, and that it is important to have a branch of government with the purposes of interpreting the constitution. The greater question, however, might be how well the Supreme court does interpret the constitution.
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