Congress first exercised this power in the Judiciary Act of This Act created a Supreme Court with six justices. It also established the lower federal court system. Over the years, various Acts of Congress have altered the number of seats on the Supreme Court, from a low of five to a high of Shortly after the Civil War, the number of seats on the Court was fixed at nine. Like all federal judges, justices are appointed by the President and are confirmed by the Senate.
They, typically, hold office for life. The salaries of the justices cannot be decreased during their term of office. These restrictions are meant to protect the independence of the judiciary from the political branches of government. The Court has original jurisdiction a case is tried before the Court over certain cases, e.
District Court, the U. Court of International Trade may appeal to a U. Court of Appeals. Parties dissatisfied with the decision of the trial court may take their case to the intermediate Court of Appeals. A party may ask the U. Supreme Court to review a decision of the U. Court of Appeals, but the Supreme Court usually is under no obligation to do so. Supreme Court is the final arbiter of federal constitutional questions.
The Constitution states that federal judges are to be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. They hold office during good behavior, typically, for life. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. George Washington Papers. Library of Congress Manuscript Division. Back to top. Here, things get more complicated.
Alexander Hamilton famously wrote, in The Federalist No. Yes, judges are independent, and the Founders thought that this independence would protect their ability to uphold the law, even when doing so is unpopular.
Our written Constitution means that some such cases are probably inevitable. At the same time, our commitment to democracy means that they are, and will continue to be, controversial. It establishes the Supreme Court, and it is the basis of the federal court system.
It has served those purposes from the very beginning. At the same time, though, when we read this part of the Constitution—and many other parts of the Constitution, too—we can see how much things have changed since the nation was founded, in ways that the Framers of the Constitution could not have predicted.
The Framers were prepared to have a country in which there was only one federal court: the Supreme Court. If that were the nation we lived in today, anyone who had a complaint about anything—about unlawful discrimination, or a violation of the right to free speech, or police brutality—would have to go to state court.
The state court judge might be appointed by a governor or even a mayor, or might be elected. That would all depend on state law. State law would decide what kind of jury, if any, that person would get.
You would, ultimately, have a chance to ask the U. Supreme Court to hear your case—but the Supreme Court is just one court and can only hear a relatively small number of cases each year. That is not the nation we live in today.
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