What do you think 'Supreme' means? The Supreme Court is where you take a case after you've been through the appellate courts. If this is your actual opinion rather than a typing error then you're unqualified to take part in this conversation.
However, some arguments here on HN
have started to convince me that
the SCOTUS role as 'supreme' or
'final' is not really correct and that
Jefferson saw this. Instead,
after the SCOTUS come the voters
who can tell Congress, e.g.,
"I don't care what the SCOTUS says.
I'm a citizen and a voter, and I
say that what the NSA has been
doing spying on US citizens
violates the Fourth Amendment,
and I want you to pass a law
throttling the NSA and
getting them honoring
the Fourth Amendment."
And if such a law is not enough,
then the citizens can
amend the Constitution.
It will be nice if some plaintiff
with standing to sue brings
a case before the SCOTUS and
wins. E.g., maybe a class action
on behalf of all 120 million or
so Verizon customers who had their
telephone metadata grabbed by the NSA.
Apparently Google is bringing a case.
Effectively, no judgement is ever really final. This is because, in a democracy, we must constantly acknowledge that our judgement could be wrong. Separation of powers, as you correctly describe it, manifests that acknowledgement by providing an avenue to contradict every action. Congress can pass a stupid law, but the President can refuse to sign it and the SCOTUS can deem it unconstitutional. The President can sign a stupid order, but Congress can impeach him. SCOTUS can make a stupid decision, but the President can refuse to acknowledge it and Congress can rewrite the rules.
It's not easy in any case, and there are a lot of hoops to jump through. Generally speaking, each branch declines to take their nuclear option by acknowledging the implicit threat available and compromising beforehand. Obamacare and DOMA are both recent and useful case studies for this interplay; ignore the content and the rhetoric and just look at the mechanics of what each entity did and when and why.
Yeah, but if the People get a law passed to say what they want, then the Attorney General declines to defend/enforce it, and then Supreme Court rules that the People don't have standing.
> (as the court is the last defender of the constitution)
and in part I was responding to that, and
other claims, that the SCOTUS is
the 'last word' or some such. And recently there
is a Jefferson quote on one of the related
threads here on HN where Jefferson
in effect says that the SCOTUS judges
are no less corrupt, etc. than people in
other branches of government. The
conclusion is that, really, the last word
and too often the crucial word on
what is constitutional has to
be the voters who tell Congress what
to do and/or push through a
constitutional amendment. So, I
was trying to be realistic and correct
about the real role of the SCOTUS
in protecting, say, the Fourth Amendment
and not to push politics.
In the Federal court system of the US, the Supreme Court is the top court.
That is NOT the case in all court systems, though. In the New York State courts, for instance, the Supreme Courts are the trial courts. They are below the Supreme Court, Appellate Dicision, which is below the Court of Appeals.
Thus, your argument that a court must be the top court because it has Supreme in its name is faulty.
Your implicit (and somewhat rude) argument was that D9u should have known the Supreme Court of the US is the top court because it is named the "Supreme" court.
The New York courts are relevant because they provide a counterexample that refutes your argument. You owe D9u an apology.
You happened to be right in your conclusion that the Supreme Court of the US is the top US court, but that is only because you already knew that and tried to construct your argument backward from the conclusion.
"The United States Courts of Appeals are considered among the most powerful and influential courts in the United States. Because of their ability to set legal precedent in regions that cover millions of people, the United States Courts of Appeals have strong policy influence on U.S. law; however, this political recognition is controversial. Moreover, because the U.S. Supreme Court chooses to hear fewer than 100 of the more than 10,000 cases filed with it annually, the United States Courts of Appeals serve as the final arbiter on most federal cases."
"Appellate jurisdiction has been conferred upon the Supreme Court by various statutes, under the authority given Congress by the Constitution. The basic statute effective at this time in conferring and controlling jurisdiction of the Supreme Court may be found in 28 U. S. C. section 1251 et seq., and various special statutes. -
Created by Congress in 1978 as a check against wiretapping
abuses by the government, the court meets in a secure,
nondescript room in the federal courthouse in
Washington. All of the current 11 judges, who serve
seven-year terms, were appointed to the special court by
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and 10 of them were
nominated to the bench by Republican presidents.
Why can't they change it to be effective? This seems to be the key point:
Geoffrey R. Stone, a professor of constitutional law at
the University of Chicago, said he was troubled by the idea
that the court is creating a significant body of law
without hearing from anyone outside the government,
forgoing the adversarial system that is a staple of the
American justice system. “That whole notion is missing in
this process,” he said.
