Unit 6 - Judicial Branch Flashcards
Reasons a court case might go to a federal court
1
What are the requirements to reach federal court?
Case or controversy, actual injury
Standing, must have a substantial state
mootness
State vs Federal Jurisdiction?
State - Control over issues of state law
Federal -
Original vs Appellate Jurisdiction?
Original - Where a case originates, the court of origin and the states law that is in question.
Appellate - Power to hear legal disputes arising from courts or original jurisdiction
What is SCOTUS?
Supreme Court Of The United States
What is an Appeal?
the dispute of a legal decision of a lower court
First appeal court, State appellate court
Federal Court Sequence
U.S District Courts
(Including special purpose courts)
United States Courts of appeals (Circuit Courts)
SCOTUS
State Court Sequence
State Trial Courts (District Courts)
State Appellate Court
State Court of last result (Usually Supreme court)
SCOTUS
Trial Courts/ District Courts
MN - 289 judges (Elected)
Every county has a Court
94 District courts in the US, MN has 1 ( Based on Pop)
Original jurisdiction
Appellate Courts
MN court of appeals, 3 judge panels, 19 appellate judges
- Primarily consider legal arguments - Facts are established, looking for legal errors/issues. Usually no new information, just taking what we know and interpreting it to make a decision.
- Generally applying prior Precedent
Supreme Court
MN supreme court
- 7 Justices
- Usually start as an governor’s appointment
- 3 justices to hear case
- Must hear all 1st degree murders
- Attorneys submit briefs outlining legal arguments
- Oral arguments, 35 min for appellant, 25 for respondent
- Justices deliberate in privat, one justice wrights court opinion, usually within 3-5 months.
- Opinions outline legal decision and set precedent.
U.S supreme court
- 9 justices
- Only the most important cases, around 1%
- Attorneys submit briefs
Judicial Activism (Liberal) Judges that believe in a Living Constitution
- Make bolder policy decisions, even charting new constitutional ground with a particular decision.
- Emphasize that the courts may alleviate pressing needs- especially the needs of these who are politically or economically weak - left unmet by the majoritarian political process.
The constitution shifts and the meanings change as the world changes, it is important to interpret the meaning through a new lens when needed.
Judicial Restraint (Conservative)
- Judges adhere closely to precedent and play minimal policy making roles, leaving policy decisions to the legislators.
- Advocates believe that federal courts composed of unelected judges, should be referees and should not “legislate from the bench”
Whatever is on the constitution is what it is and does not need to be interpreted, it means what it says.
Change it if you do not like it.
John Roberts (Conservative)
Took office: 9/29/05 Nominated: George w. Bush Born in: New york School: Harvard Religion: Roman catholic Age: 66 y/o
Clarence thomas (Most Conservative)
Took office: 10/19/91 (started when 43) Nominated: George H.W Bush Born in: Georgia School: Holy Cross/Yale Religion: Roman catholic Age: 73 y/o
Stephen Breyer (Liberal)
Took office: 8/3/94 Nominated: Bill Clinton Born in: California School: Stanford/ Oxford/ Harvard Religion: Jewish Age: 83 y/o
Sonia Sotomayor (Liberal)
Took office: 8/6/09 Nominated: Barack Obama Born in: New York School: Princeton/ Yale Religion: Roman catholic Age: 67 y/o
Elana Kagan (Liberal)
Took office: 8/7/10 Nominated: Barack Obama Born in: New York School: Princeton Religion: Age:
Neal Gorsuch
Took office: 4/10/2017 Nominated: Born in: Colorado School: Columbia/ Harvard/ Oxford Religion: Roman catholic Age: 54 y/o
Neal Gorsuch (Conservative)
Took office: 4/10/2017 Nominated: Donald Trump Born in: Colorado School: Columbia/ Harvard/ Oxford Religion: Roman catholic Age: 54 y/o
Brett Kavanaugh (Conservative)
Took office: 10/6/2018 Nominated: Donald Trump Born in: School: Yale Religion: Age:
Amy Coney Barrett (Conservative)
Took office: 10/27/2020 Nominated: Donald Trump Born in: Louisiana School: Rhodes/ Notre Dame Religion: Roman Catholic Age: 49 y/o
Qualifications?
No qualifications to be on the supreme court
Trends of Justices (MQ sharts)
- Lots of law school
- Generally Ivy league School
- Age - Generally over 50
- Experience and jobs in politics
Ideal Justice
Age
Young = Young, stays in court longer. Long term justice with their Liberal/Conservative views
Old = more experience
Gender
Depends on issues, perfect world no ideals
Ethnicity
Better for diversity, some situations understood better
Legal Experience
Lots of school and experiences
Life experience
Better for understanding different situations of people
Steps to become a justice
- Nominated by president
- Approved by senate
- Appointed by president
President appoints…?
all court justices
How long do Senators get to question supreme court nominees?
Senators on the judiciary committee are given 30 minutes to question supreme court nominees and 24 minutes for a follow up question.
precedent
“A court decision that is considered as authority for deciding subsequent cases involving identical or similar facts, or similar legal issues.”
How Do Court Cases Affect Law?
Though the judicial branch doesn’t directly make laws, the courts interpret laws through the cases brought before them. The American legal system is a Common Law system, which means that judges base their decisions on previous court rulings in similar cases.Therefore, previous decisions by a higher court are binding, and become part of the law.
What is a Landmark Case?
A landmark case is a court case that is studied because it has historical and legal significance. The most significant cases are those that have had a lasting effect on the application of a certain law, often concerning your individual rights and liberties.
Landmark Case:
Marbury v. Madison (1803)
This case explores the legal concepts of federalism, judicial review, and separation of powers/checks and balances.
At the end of President John Adams’ term, his secretary of state failed to deliver documents commissioning William Marbury as justice of the peace in the District of Columbia. Once President Thomas Jefferson was sworn in, he told James Madison, his secretary of state, not to deliver the documents to Marbury and others in order to keep members of the opposing political party from taking office. Marbury sued James Madison asking the Supreme Court to issue a writ requiring him to deliver the documents necessary to officially make Marbury justice of the peace. The Supreme Court chose not to answer Marbury’s question, but rather whether they had the jurisdiction to issue the writ. The Marbury v. Madison decision resulted in the establishment of the concept of judicial review.
Landmark Case:
Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)
This case explores the legal concept of due process.
In 1834, Dred Scott, an enslaved person, was purchased in Missouri and then brought to Illinois, a free (non-slave) state. He later moved with his enslaver to present-day Minnesota, where slavery had been recently prohibited, and then back to Missouri. When his enslaver died, Scott sued the widow to whom he was left, claiming he was no longer an enslaved person because he had become free after living in a free state. At a time when the country was in deep conflict over slavery, the Supreme Court decided that Dred Scott was not a “citizen of the state” so it had no jurisdiction in the matter, but the majority opinion also stated that Dred Scott was not a free man.
Landmark Case:
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
This case explores the legal concept of equal protection.
In 1890, Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act declaring that all rail companies carrying passengers in Louisiana must provide separate but equal accommodations for White and non-White passengers. The penalty for sitting in the wrong car was a fine of $25 or 20 days in jail. A group of Black citizens joined forces with the East Louisiana Railroad Company to fight the Act. In 1892, Homer Plessy, who was one-eighth Black, purchased a first-class ticket and sat in the White-designated railroad car. Plessy was arrested for violating the Separate Car Act and argued in court that the act violated the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. After losing twice in the lower courts, Plessy took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the previous decisions that racial segregation is constitutional under the “separate but equal” doctrine.
Landmark Case:
Korematsu v. United States (1944)
This case explores the legal concept of equal protection.
After Pearl Harbor was bombed in December 1941, the military feared a Japanese attack on the U.S. mainland. The U.S. government was worried that Americans of Japanese descent might aid the enemy. In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order forcing many people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast to leave their homes and businesses and live in internment camps for the duration of the war. Fred Korematsu, an American citizen of Japanese descent, was arrested and convicted of violating the executive order. Korematsu did not believe his arrest was fair. He challenged his conviction in the courts saying that Congress, the president, and the military authorities did not have the power to issue the relocation orders, and that he was being discriminated against based on his race. The government argued that the evacuation was necessary to protect national security. The federal Appeals Court agreed with the government. Korematsu appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court agreed with government and stated that the need to protect the country was a greater priority than the individual rights of the people of Japanese descent forced into internment camps.
Landmark Case:
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
This case explores the legal concept of equal protection.
In Topeka, Kansas, in the 1950s, schools were segregated by race. Each day, Linda Brown and her sister had to walk through a dangerous railroad switchyard to get to the bus stop for the ride to their all-Black elementary school. There was a school closer to the Brown’s house, but it was only for White students. Linda Brown and her family believed that the segregated school system violated the 14th Amendment and took their case to court. The federal District Court decided that segregation in public education was harmful to Black children, but the segregation was legal because all-Black schools and all-White schools had similar buildings, transportation, curricula, and teachers. The Browns appealed their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, stating that even if the facilities were similar, segregated schools could never be equal. The Court decided that state laws requiring separate but equal schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Landmark Case:
Tinker v. Des Moines (1969)
This case explores the legal concept of freedom of speech.
John and Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt of Des Moines, Iowa, wore black armbands to their public school as a symbol of protest against American involvement in the Vietnam War. School authorities asked the students to remove their armbands, and they were subsequently suspended. The Supreme Court decided that the students had the right to wear the armbands because they did not disrupt the educational mission of the school. Justice Abe Fortas stated that no one expects students to “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
Landmark Case:
Roe v. Wade (1973)
This case explores the legal concept of right to privacy.
Jane Roe was a pregnant Texas resident in 1970. Texas law made it a felony to abort a fetus unless “on medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother.” Roe filed suit against Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County. She argued that the law was unconstitutional because it violated the guarantee of personal liberty and the right to privacy implicitly guaranteed in the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and 14th Amendments. In deciding for Roe, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated all state laws that prohibited first trimester abortions.
Landmark Case:
United States v. Nixon (1974)
This case explores the legal concepts of executive privilege, federalism, and separation of powers/checks and balances.
A congressional hearing about President Nixon’s Watergate break-in scandal revealed that he had installed a tape-recording device in the Oval Office. The special prosecutor in charge of the case wanted access to these taped discussions to help prove that President Nixon and his aides had abused their power and broken the law. President Nixon claimed executive privilege and refused to hand over the tapes. President Nixon’s incomplete compliance with the special prosecutor’s demands was challenged and eventually taken to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court decided that executive privilege is not limitless, and the tapes were released.
Landmark Case:
New Jersey v. T.L.O. (1985)
This case explores the legal concept of search and seizure.
A New Jersey high school student was accused of violating school rules by smoking in the restroom, leading an assistant principal to search her purse for cigarettes. The vice principal discovered marijuana and other items that implicated the student in dealing marijuana which was illegal. The student tried to have the evidence from her purse suppressed because the search was a violation of her Fourth Amendment rights. She contended that the mere possession of cigarettes was not a violation of school rules; therefore, a desire for evidence of smoking in the restroom did not justify the search. The Supreme Court decided that the search did not violate the Constitution and established more lenient standards for reasonableness in school searches.
Landmark Case:
Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988)
This case explores the legal concepts of freedom of speech and freedom of press.
Hazelwood East High School Principal Robert Reynolds reviewed Spectrum, the school’s student-written newspaper, before publication. In May 1983, he decided to have certain pages pulled because of the sensitive content in two of the articles and acted quickly to remove them in order to meet the paper’s publication deadline. The journalism students felt that this censorship was a direct violation of their First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court decided that Principal Reynolds had the right to such editorial decisions, as he had “legitimate pedagogical concerns.”
Landmark Case:
Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)
This case explores the legal concepts of equal protection and federalism.
Federalism divides power between state government and the national government. Marriage is an area that has historically been left to the states resulting in a variety of state marriage laws developed over the 19th and 20th centuries. While the Supreme Court generally did not hear cases arising from disputes regarding marriage law, they did strike down laws that prohibited interracial marriage as unconstitutional in 1967 (Loving v. Virginia). Starting in the 1970s, a handful of states defined marriage as between one man and one woman. In the late 20th century, LGBTQ rights advocates began to challenge these laws and push for marriage equality.
