Supreme Court

I know basic knowledge about the Supreme Court as of right now. After reading the History Channel article I learned new things about the Supreme court and how it operates. Something new I learned from reading this article was that the supreme court was established in 1789. The Supreme court’s first action was passing the Judiciary act of 1789 which stated that there would be six members of the supreme court who would serve until they died or retired. This is still the rule today and I did not know that it was established in the very beginning of the supreme court’s history. 

Another interesting fact was the first case the supreme court took in 1791. The case was West v Barnes which was between a farmer and a family that he owed money to. After only a day  after initially hearing the opposing sides the court had come to a decision. This is very interesting to me because of how fast they came to a decision especially with it being the very first case. Now the court takes a much longer time to decide on cases and create statements on their reasonings.

An important takeaway from this article is how far our current structure for the Supreme Court has come and how it got to where it is today. There are some things that have stayed the same like the process in which the justices are selected and the general structure. Back then it was still the president who elected the justices of the court. However there are some changes today in order for decisions to be well thought out. Today each justice must create a written statement on their opinions on the case before it even goes to trial. It seems that today there is a much more lengthy process when it comes to choosing cases to take and making decisions on those cases. 

After reading this article nothing much changed on how I see the supreme court because I already knew about it from classes in my past. However I did not know how far it has come since the start in 1789.