Supreme Court

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Part of the series on

U.S. Discrimination Law

Standards of Review

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Other Legal Theories

Substantive due process State action doctrine

Defining Moments in Law

The 14th Amendment Plessy v. Ferguson Brown v. Board of Education Loving v. Virginia U.S. v. Virginia Romer v. Evans Lawrence v. Texas

Modalities of Constitutional Law

Textualism • Originalism • Dynamism

Issues in Constitutional Law

Same-sex marriage Gay rights Civil rights

The Supreme Court (of the United States), often abbreviated "SCOTUS", consists of nine really old people who sit in judgement on whether or not laws (local, state, or federal) are in compliance with the Constitution.

The members, or "associate justices", are appointed by the President, and take office upon confirmation by the Senate (which is not always forthcoming).

One member serves as "chief justice", who, although still only having one vote on cases, has the interesting and sometimes important power to assign the writing of majority decisions (when they are in the majority) to one of the associates. This can be used to influence the exact nature of a decision - the chief justice might vote with a four justice minority (or more importantly, a five justice majority) in order to assign the decision writing to a justice with a weaker stand than the other members of the majority.

In practice the most powerful member of the Court is rarely the Chief Justice but the one or two "moderate" members who are very often the swing vote on contentious issues.

[edit] Current bench

• Ruth Ginsburg
• And a bunch of men, including one "affirmative action" skinned individual.

[edit] Other supreme courts

Most of the US States have their own supreme courts.

Also, many other countries have similar ultimate judicial arbiters with one name or another.

[edit] See also

• RationalWiki articles on a whole bunch of Supreme Court decisions.