The Founding Era

I did not know a lot about the Supreme Court previously, so the videos were very enlightening on not only the function of the Court but also some of the Justice's opinions on how it functions. First off, I had never considered how the power of the Supreme Court lies largely in the people's faith. A quote from the video stated that the Court gets its "legitimacy from the Constitution, but their power rests on public faith," emphasizing the role of the people in the government as well as why the Court is able to hash out even the most controversial of matters.

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The most important takeaway I got from the videos was that the Justices themselves look at every case they receive and decide whether the Court should review it or not. That fact is very comforting in that the highest judges in the government review every petition they receive. It also shows how connected the Court is to the country, even when it is detached in its decision-making.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court has a website where anyone can see the day's schedule, recent rulings, and even live audio of any current oral arguments going on. Although the Justices are interpreting a 200+ year old document, technology has allowed aspects of the Court to become even more public and accessible.

As for the most surprising thing I learned, it has to be how oral arguments are conducted. The Justices in the second video were very vocal about how they saw the arguments as an opportunity to hone in on their already established points, usually through questions they asked the lawyers. They even stated it was more of a dialogue between Justices than it was with the lawyers, which was very interesting to me. It completely changed the idea of a court I had previously.

Lastly, the video changed how I saw the Supreme Court in a lot of ways, mostly in that I had more context as to what exactly they do and how they go about it. More specifically, the idea of a dialogue between Justices, as mentioned before, altered my view, but so did the idea of "opinions" written by the Justices after a decision. One of the Justices within the majority of the ruling would be tasked with writing a legal explanation of why and how they came to that decision. What is really interesting is how other Justices, of either the majority or minority group, can contradict or agree with the first's opinion and add to the final document. These practices really changed my perspective on the Supreme Court and differentiated it significantly from the types of courts seen in shows and media.