Blog Post #2 - Supreme Court

I did not know how many cases the Supreme Court gets. Watching this video taught me that they receive more than 100 cases a week, and about 7,000 a year. I had assumed it was well under that, which was a shock when I heard just how much it really is. Although there are quite a lot, the court only ends up accepting about 100 a year due to a lot of them being written arguments trying to persuade this court that a lower court ruling was incorrect.

The most important take-away to me was in the video, when the Justices met, and discussed how you are actually living in the fact that people who wrote the Constitution guide us in solving problems 200 years later. I have never thought about it this way, but this video enlightened me to this fact. Another important take-away is that every petition gets the same individual consideration. 

Something that I learned which completely surprised me, is that in all of American history, there have only been just over 100 Supreme Court Justices, and they all have served around an average of 16 years. This was shocking to me because I thought there were a lot more Supreme Court Justices and had no idea how rare it is to be one.

All together, this video changed the way I thought of the Supreme Court, because I did not have a full understanding of how it worked, or how much work they really do. I am now able to understand more of what exactly happens in the Supreme Court. I learned that newly arrived petitions are sent to the Justices once a week. Each Justice is assisted by Law Clerks and Secretaries, but the Justice is responsible for deciding the case. All of this I was unaware of, so it was informational for me to learn how it works.