Whitewater Scotus Updates

Hello everyone and welcome back to another week at the Supreme Court. This week we are talking about perhaps one of the most impactful and some might say problematic Supreme Court cases in the last 20 years. Citizens United v. FEC is often simply referred to as “Citizens United” because it simple. It is also one of the only simple things about this case. My goal today is to try to distill it as much as possible.

 First things first, I will tell you what it means. Citizens United overruled a long-standing court decision that limited the amount of money that corporations could spend on political campaigns. What this did was allow corporations to act as “people” and thus are required by the Constitution to be able to use their finances to influence campaigns (like commercials, ads, donations to help a politician win an election) as much as they like. Across the last 3 presidential elections, the amount of money spent each election has more than doubled to nearly 10 billion in total spending in the 2020 presidential election. The idea was a conservative non-profit group sued the FEC after they stopped Citizens United from airing a movie that criticized Hillary Clinton leading up to the 2008 presidential election. The idea by the justices who voted in favor of Citizens United (it was a 5-4 vote, so very close) was that the money would be transparent and obviously not corrupt. However, the past election cycles and studies down have found that not to be the case. The reason being is that these corporations can get their money from anywhere, and they are not required to say where it is from. This means that if someone from anywhere in the world wanted a specific politician to win for their gain, they can give money and no one in the US would know where it came from.

That is all this week, I know it was slightly dark, but it is an important case to understand when looking at presidential elections. See you next week!

Welcome back to another week at the Supreme Court! This week is a follow up to last weeks as we go over some pretty important cases.

The first of these is Miranda v. Arizona (1966). Yes, it is exactly what you’re thinking, this is where your “Miranda Rights” come from. The case is based on the consolidation of 4 cases in each of which the defendant confessed guilt with out being informed of their 5^th amendment rights. In 1963, Ernesto Miranda was coerced after two hours to give a confession without advising Miranda of his 5^th amendment right to have an attorney present. The Arizona court held that his rights were not violated but the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. In a very close decision, the Court decided with a 5-4 vote that it is legally required to inform a defendant of their rights, and thus your “miranda rights” were born.

 The last of these shorter, yet important case is Marbury v. Madison, a legendary case that reinforced the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The Supremacy Clause says that laws made attached to the Constitution are the absolute highest law of the land and take priority over any conflicting state laws. The case concluded in a 6-0 vote that Congress does NOT have the power to overrule a law, as it violates the Supremacy Clause and thus the Constitution. It is not a particularly interesting case, but it solidified that the Judicial Branch is the law maker in the country. Next week, we look at a specific case that has had extremely large implications to the way campaigns are financed in the United States.

Hello and welcome back to yet another week at the Supreme Court! This week we will be discussion some remarkably important cases that the Supreme Court has decided over the years and what they mean. First up is Brown v. Board of Education (1954). This is likely a case that many of you are familiar with, but what exactly is it and what does it mean? The question being asked of the Court was whether or not segregation based exclusively on race violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment. The key there is the Equal Protection Clause. A Clause is a single statement or sentence within amendments to the Constitution (Think Right to Free Speech in the 1^st amendment). It is quite simple, basically no state or federal law can deprive citizens of their rights of liberty and freedom. The Court determined that separating black and white citizens based solely on color violated black Americans Constitutional rights, and thus enforced segregation was destroyed. Another famous case that many might be familiar with is United States v. Nixon. In light of the Watergate scandal, President Nixon attempted to use one of the powers given to the president called “Executive Privilege”. Executive Privilege is the President’s ability to classify information that he does not want disclosed to the public. In this case, President Nixon attempted to lock information pertaining to his connection to the Watergate scandal behind Executive Privilege which would prevent the Supreme Court or any other court from using that information as evidence in a case. The Supreme Court ruled that the separation of powers does not allow for the President to restrict information in regard to the Due Process (process of being given a fair trial) and that Nixon could not avoid the Court by using the Executive Privilege. In short, he tried to use his powers as the President to hide that he was guilty. That’s all for this week, next week we pick up right here discussing more landmark cases.

Hello and welcome back to the Supreme Court. This week, we are looking at a couple of the cases the Supreme Court is considering right now. The Court is unique in that it gets to decide if it wants to listen to a case. So, for example, one of the cases we are looking at is Texas v. California. The case revolves around state travel bans. The state of Texas makes an application to the Supreme Court to see if they will make a ruling on the case. If they decide yes, then the case proceeds and the 9 justices we met the past two weeks will make a decision on it in normal court proceedings. If they decide no, then the case does not move forward at all and the travel ban will remain. Now specifically, Texas v. California is about a California state travel ban that prohibits state-funded or state-sponsored travel to Texas. The reason for this is that California reacted to a Texas law that states that day care providers can deny children that do not align with them religiously if they choose. The goal of California’s travel is to basically make Texas want to rethink its laws regarding religious freedom and the way it affects individuals. The next case is US v. Tsarnaev. That might sound familiar as Tsarnaev is the younger of the two brothers that committed the Boston Marathon Bombing. In the case, they are determining if the District Court made an error in choosing a jury by not asking proper questions, and that the court did not permit all evidence when they were determining if Tsarnaev would get the death penalty. Both of these cases are currently waiting to see if the Supreme Court will hear them, and if the court does decide to, both could have very large implications for the law.

Hello, welcome back to another week at the Supreme Court. This week I will be discussing trends that appear in the court, and why these trends appear. When a court justice is appointed (basically hired) to the Supreme Court, they are chosen by the current president at that time. There are 9 justices, and they have life appointments. What that means is that when they are appointed, they get to keep their jobs so long as they have “good behavior”. Unless you did something extremely unprofessional or literally starting profanity, it is basically a lifetime job. They can either retire, resign, die, or be removed from the position. If one of these four things happens, that leaves an open seat on the court, which you want filled as soon as possible so that there are no ties (4-4). Presidents then get to choose who they want to nominate. Once nominated, there is a brief hearing where members of the Senate decide if that person should be a justice. The trick is, a president can only be in power for 8 years, so conceptually, the only things he can get done are done in those four years. But with the Supreme Court, that is not the case. A president can pick a justice that they feel reflects their ideology, and thus, the beliefs of the president are generally engrained in the Supreme Court. The justices do not vote by party, they are simply more conservative or more liberal (we will be going over who is who in the coming weeks). They also do not vote specifically by the president who appointed them, however generally, especially in larger cases, they stick to their guns, with the exception of a few outliers.

In the first blog, I will briefly be going over how the Supreme Court of the United States works. It functions as the highest body of law in the country and serves to clarify and better understand this countries texts, primarily including the Constitution. When a case is going to go to the Supreme Court, it must be sent there by a lower court. A lower court is any court that is not the Supreme Court. The courts are made up of three levels, District courts, which are all over the country, Courts of Appeal, which are split up among districts of states, and the Supreme Court. When a case arrives at the lowest level, the District court, it will be resolved. If one of the parties in the case is unhappy with the result, they can appeal the case up to the next level and it will be heard. If they want to take the case to the highest level; however, it is not guaranteed. The Supreme Court is unique in that it gets to decide if it wants to hear a case and argue it. There are 9 judges on the Court called Justices. When someone wants their case to be heard by these guys, they all read the information about it, then they take a vote. When they are deciding if they even want to hear it, only 4 of the justices need to agree, whereas when they are actually deciding the case, they need 5. After a decision is made, one of the justices is put in charge of writing the “opinion” of the court. The opinion is the legal explanation of why the justices made the decision they did. This helps the lower courts handle situations that are similar in the future.