1. The Federal Judicial System: Applying The Law
Chapter 14
The Federal Judicial System: Applying The Law

3. Bush v. Gore 2000
Through its ruling in Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended the 2000 presidential election giving the presidency to Bush. At issue was whether the “undervotes” in Florida – ballots on which counting machines had detected no vote for president – would be tabulated by hand. Florida’s top court had ordered a statewide manual recount, but the U.S. Supreme Court by a narrow 5 – 4 margin and issued a rare emergency order halting the action.

4. Justice John Paul Stevens:
Dissenting Opinion
Justice John Paul Stevens:
“Preventing the recount from being completed will inevitably cast a doubt upon the legitimacy of the election.”

5. 3 Key Points about the Bush v. Gore Decision
1. The judiciary is an extremely important policy making body. Some of its rulings are as important as a law passed by Congress or an Executive Order.
2. The judiciary has considerable discretion in rulings. The justices invoked their individual interpretations of the law.
3. The judiciary is a political as well as legal institution. The Bush v. Gore case was a product of contending political forces, was developed through a political process, had political content, and was decided by political appointees.

6. Chapter 14 Main Points
The federal judiciary includes the Supreme Court of the U.S., which functions mainly as an appellate court; courts of appeal, which hear appeals; and district courts, which hold trials.
Judicial decisions are constrained by applicable constitutional law, statutory and administrative law, and precedent.
3. The judiciary has become an increasingly powerful policymaking body in recent decades, raising the question of the judiciary’s proper role in a democracy.

7. The Federal Judicial System
The framers of the Constitution established the judiciary as a separate and independent branch of the federal government, but granted Congress the power to decide the size and structure of the lower federal courts.
Unlike the situation for the offices of president, senator, and representative, the Constitution places no age, residency, or citizenship qualifications on federal judicial office. Nor does the Constitution require a judge to have legal training. Tradition alone dictates that federal judges have an education or professional background in the law.

8. The Supreme Court of the United States.
The Supreme Court of the United States is the nation’s highest court. The chief justice presides over the court. All justices are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

9. The Constitution gave the Supreme Court both original and appellate jurisdiction:
Original Jurisdiction – The authority of a given court to be the first court to hear a case.
Appellate Jurisdiction – The authority of a given court to review cases that have already been tried in lower courts and are appealed to it by the losing party; such a court is called an appeal court or appellate court.
It is important to note that appellate courts, including the Supreme Court, do not retry cases; rather, they determine whether a trial court acted in accord with applicable law.

10. Selecting and Deciding Cases
The primary function of the judiciary is to interpret the law in such a way that rules made in the past can be consistently applied in the present. This function gives the courts a policy-making role.
Precedent – A judicial decision that serves as a rule for settling subsequent cases of a similar nature.
Lower courts are expected to follow precedent –that is, to resolve cases of a like nature in ways consistent with upper-court rulings. (They do not always do this.)

11. Selecting and Deciding Cases
The Supreme Court’s ability to set legal precedent is strengthened by its nearly complete discretion in choosing the cases it will hear. The largest portion of cases that reach the Supreme Court do so through a Writ of Certiorari – Permission granted by a higher court to allow a losing party in a legal case to bring the case before it for a ruling. Each year roughly seven thousand parties apply for certiorari, but the Court only accepts about a hundred cases for a full hearing and signed ruling.
The Court seldom accepts a routine case, even if the justices believe the lower court has erred. The Supreme Court’s job is not to correct every mistake of other courts but to resolve broad legal questions.
In recent years, about three-fourths of the Supreme Court’s decisions have reversed lower court judgments.

12. Issuing Decisions and Opinions
The decision indicates which party the court supports and by how large a margin. The opinion explains the reasons behind the decisions.
Decision – A vote of the Supreme Court in a particular case that indicates which party the justices side with and by how large a margin.
Opinion – A court’s written explanation of its decision, which serves to inform others of the legal basis for the decision.

13. Issuing Decisions and Opinions
When a majority of the justices agree on the legal basis of a decision, the result is a majority decision. In some cases there is no majority opinion because a majority of the justices agree on the decision but cannot agree on the legal basis for it. The result in these cases is a plurality opinion, which presents the view held by most of the justices who side with the winning party. Another type of opinion is a concurring opinion, which is a separate view written by a justice who votes with the majority but disagrees with its reasoning.
Justices on the losing side can write a dissenting opinion to explain their reasons for disagreeing with the majority position.

14. Other Federal Courts
There are more than 100 federal courts but only one Supreme Court, and its position at the top of the country’s judicial system give the Supreme Court unparalleled importance. The U.S. has federal and state courts because of the framers of the constitution’s belief in federalism.

15. U.S. District Courts
The lowest federal courts are the district courts. There are more than 90 federal district courts. There are more than 800 district court judges who are appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate. Federal cases usually originate in district courts, which are trial courts where the parties argue their sides. District courts are the only courts in the federal system in which juries hear testimony. Most federal cases end with the district court’s decision; the losing party does not appeal the decision to a higher court.

16. U.S. Courts of Appeals
The federal judiciary includes a few specialty courts as well. Among them are the U.S. Court of International Trade, which handles cases involving appeals of U.S. Customs Office rulings; and the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, which hears appeals of military courts-martial.

17. State Courts
The 10th Amendment protects each state in its sovereignty, and each state has its own court system. Like the federal courts, state court systems have trial courts at the bottom level and appellate courts at the top.
Each state decides for itself the structure of its courts and the method of judicial appointment. In some states judges are appointed by the government, but in most states judgeships are elective offices.
Missouri Plan – The governor selects a judge from a short list of acceptable candidates provided by a judicial selection committee. To stay on the bench, the judge selected must periodically receive the voters’ support in a “yes” or “no” election.
More than 95% of the nation’s legal cases are decided in state courts.

18. Federal Court Appointees
Federal Judges and Justices are political officials who exercise the authority of a separate and powerful branch of government. All federal jurists bring their political views with them to the courtroom and have regular opportunities to promote their political beliefs through the cases they decide. Not surprisingly, the process by which federal judges are appointed is a partisan one.

19. Supreme Court Nominees
The formal mechanism for appointments to the Supreme Court and the lower courts is the same: the president nominates, and the Senate confirms or rejects.
Because most justices retain their positions for many years, presidents can influence judicial policy through their appointments long after they have left office. Nearly 20% of presidential nominees to the Supreme Court have been rejected by the Senate on grounds of judicial qualification, political views, personal ethics, or partisanship. (Most of these before 1900)

20. Lower Court Nominees
The president normally delegates to the deputy Attorney General the task of screening potential nominees for lower-court judgeships. Senatorial Courtesy is also a consideration in these appointments; this tradition holds that a senator from the state in which a vacancy has arisen should be given a say in the nomination if the senator is of the same party as the president.

21. The Nature of Judicial Decision Making
Oliver Wendell Holmes:
“My job is not to do justice, my job is to play the game according to the rules.”

22. The Nature of Judicial Decision Making
The Constraints of Facts
Facts – The relevant circumstances of a legal dispute or offense as determined by a trial court. The facts of the case are crucial because they help determine which law or laws are applicable in the case.
The Constraints of Law
Laws – The constitutional provisions, legislative statutes, or judicial precedents that apply to a court case.

23. The Constraints of Law
There are three sources of law that constrain the courts: the Constitution, Statutes, and Precedents.
1. The Constitution:
The Constitution of the United States is the nation’s highest law, and judges and justices are sworn to uphold it. When a case raises a constitutional issue, a court has the duty to apply the Constitution to the case.

24. The Constraints of Law Statutes:
Most criminal law cases (where an individual is charged with engaging in an illegal act such as theft or murder) and civil law cases (where the parties are engaged in a non-criminal disputes such as divorce proceedings or conflicting property claims) are covered by laws or statutes created by legislative action or by administrative regulations that have been developed by government agencies on the basis of statutory law.

25. The Constraints of Law 3. Legal Precedents:
Precedent holds that principles of law, once established, should be accepted as authoritative in subsequent similar cases. Precedent is one of the means by which greater consistency in the application of the law can be achieved. It is the most important function of the Supreme Court.

26. Political Influences on Judicial Decisions
Judges do have some leeway in their decisions. As a consequence, their rulings reflect not only legal influences but political ones, which can come from both outside and inside the judicial system.

27. Outside Influences
Judges are responsive to public opinion. The Supreme Court typically has stayed close enough to public opinion to avoid seriously eroding public support for its decisions. (Ex. – Brown Decision)
Congress and the President both have powerful means of influencing the federal judiciary. Congress is constitutionally empowered to establish the Supreme Court’s size and appellate jurisdiction, and Congress can rewrite legislation that it feels the judiciary has misinterpreted.
The President is responsible for enforcing court decisions and has some control over the types of cases that come before the courts. Judicial appointments also provide the president with judicial influence.

28. Inside Influences
Judicial beliefs are affected by the political beliefs of the men and women who sit on the court. Partisanship was never more evident than in the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore (2000) decision. The five justices in the majority are considered the more conservative judges.
Major shifts in the Supreme Court’s positions usually occur when its membership changes. Such shifts are related to political shifts.

29. Judicial Power and Democratic Government
The judiciary’s power is most evident when it declares executive or legislative action to be unconstitutional. The power of the courts to make such determinations, called judicial review, was first asserted in the landmark Marbury v. Madison (1803). Without judicial review, the federal courts would be unable to restrain an elected official or institution that has gone out of control.

30. The Debate over the Proper Role of the Judiciary
The question of judicial power centers on the basic issue of legitimacy: the proper authority of the judiciary in a political system based in part on the principle of majority rule.
??? How far should the judiciary go in asserting its authority when that authority collides with or goes beyond the action of elected institutions?
Two Schools of Thought: Judicial Restraint / Judicial Activism

31. Judicial Restraint
The doctrine that the judiciary should be highly respectful of precedent and should defer to the judgment of the legislatures. Claims that the job of the judges is to work within the confines of laws set down by tradition and lawmaking majorities.
Advocates of judicial restraint contend that when the judiciary assumes policy functions that traditionally belong to elected institutions, it undermines the premise of self-government: the right of the majority to choose society’s policies.

32. Judicial Activism
The doctrine that the courts should develop new legal principles when judges see a compelling need, even if this action places them in conflict with the policy decisions of elected officials.
The doctrine of judicial activism is espoused by liberal activist who promote protection of individual rights. Proponents of judicial activism believe for example that same-sex marriages should have many of the same rights as opposite-sex couples. They would applaud the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas which struck down laws making it a crime for adults of the same sex to engage in consensual sexual relations.

33. The Judiciary’s Proper Role: A Question of Competing Values
The United States is a constitutional democracy that recognizes both the power of the majority to rule and the claim of the minority to protection of its rights. The constitutional question of how far the courts should be allowed to go in substituting their judgment for that of elected institutions and established law is open to question.