Wednesday, September 4, 2019
The Supreme Court's "True purpose"
Something Mr. Stewart said in class today made me think of how we view the supreme court today. While finishing up the worksheet for the documentary, and answering the question about the changing role of the supreme court, Mr. Stewart said that their role would eventually evolve into the "protector of the people's civil liberties". If this was not a purpose of the court initially, what was the court going to be for? Even if we don't agree with the court's rulings, were they not justifying their rulings with reasoning for how they were protecting people's rights? For example, the minimum wage laws, where they said that it infringed on the people's rights to work for less, or the maximum hour laws, which they said infringed on the people's rights to negotiate their own contracts and working hours. Although ultimately they were not protecting the employees from being exploited by their employers, and these justifications were just stretch reasonings to continue pushing their pro-business agenda, the court still felt the need to say that they were making these rulings as a way to protect the rights of the people. So wasn't it always their role to secure the rights of the people, even if they were not always doing this in practice? Was that not always the theory? Or did the founding fathers just make a main court, with no intention of giving the power to secure the rights of the people to this branch? They certainly didn't write into the constitution that the court had the power of judicial review, but they also wanted it to, so why would the write down what the true purpose of the court is? Most people view the supreme court as the ultimate reader of the law, and interpreter of the law, as a way to secure people's rights, but was this always the intent? Hopefully, this will be explained when we learn more about the supreme court later in the course.
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I think its interesting to think about how the Supreme Court was originally intended. In the Constitution, it was stated to be the decider in interstate affairs ad to be highest ruling court. It seems the Founding Fathers knew there would be disputes and knew that there needed to be a government body with superiority over other courts, allowing its decision to be undisputed. However, as https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/essay/supreme-court-then-and-now points out, it was not until 1803 that the Supreme Court had the power of judiciary review, meaning that this was not intended by the Constitution. Despite it not be explicitly written, I believe it has benefited American society that this became a role of teh Supreme Court, as, in the many years since the Constitution, the world has changed. We now need a body to help apply this document into modern society. One example is the amendment giving the right to bear arms, yet since then semi-automatic and automatic weapons have been made. Without the Supreme Court having the power of judiciary review, these weapons may have been purchasable by the general public.
ReplyDeleteI think what Mr. Stewart meant was that the Supreme Court did not protect civil liberties in the way that we think of them today. Nowadays, when we think of civil liberties, we think of the definition formed during the 1950's and 1960's during the civil rights movement, such as the right to vote for everyone, the right to use public facilities, the right to equal protection under the law, etc. The author in the article https://www.britannica.com/topic/civil-rights points out that the definition of civil rights in a society changes over time and depends heavily on the culture of the society. Therefore, the Supreme Court probably was ruling on civil rights in their opinion although by civil rights, they meant rights like the liberty of contract and the liberty of a free market. This role continued although the definition of civil rights has changed.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the source! this is a super helpful distinction that I didn't pick up on.
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