Supreme Court Reflection (BLOG POST #2)

 After watching the videos on The Supreme Court, the number of cases they received stood out to me most. I had no idea so many cases petitioned The Supreme Court. According to the video which was uploaded 11 years ago, the court receives 100 new cases a week and about 7,000 per year. Given how much time has passed they could be receiving even more by now. However, in my mind, I always assumed they had a couple hundred cases sent to them a year and they heard about half of them. 

The most important takeaway from this material for me was that oral arguments really can change the opinions and findings of the Justices. The Justices will all have different viewpoints based on the briefings and will then use the oral arguments presented during the case to make their final decisions in deliberations. Justice Kennedy even says in the video that oral arguments have to make a difference because "abstract principles have to be applied in real-life situations". So, in that 30 minutes, the attorneys have to present their case and respond to the Justice's questioning someone's whole opinion could change. 

The most surprising thing I learned was how detailed the opinions of the court are and how long the process of publishing them is. The first draft often takes roughly 4 weeks to write and that is with the help of clerks and secretaries. Then after the first draft is finished, it is sent to all eight of the other justices and gets revised up to a dozen more times "in the effort to persuade the others to join the opinion". I had no idea justices attempted to persuade their colleagues or that these opinions took so long to successfully craft. 

After watching the videos I have a newfound deeper respect for The Supreme Court. This isn't to say I had no respect for them before, learning the ins and outs of the court has just made my opinion of them shift. To interpret a document from over 200 years ago and successfully tie it to modern problems can be tricky in and of itself. However, tying that document to modern problems and doing so while debating with eight other individuals trying to do the same thing increases the level of difficulty substantially.