The Pros And Cons Of The US Judicial System

The Constitution of the United States of America is praised for its famous opening line “we the people” as it establishes a democracy in which “the people” are ostensibly able to dictate the ways in which their country will operate. In order to implement a democracy of “the people”, the authors of the Constitution foresaw the need for a system of checks and balances in which each governing branch might check the other in order to prevent a disproportionate balance of power. Each branch today has the power to review, in moderation, the decisions of the others. One such example of this system is judicial review; in present day this term is ubiquitous, yet the idea was explicitly absent from the Constitution. While reasons for this oversight

The Executive and Congressional branches have many checks imposed upon them while the Supreme Court experiences only a few: the ability of congress to approve and the ability of the president to appoint justices. These limited checks complement the absence of a term limit or formal set of qualifications imposed on justices, thus granting the US Supreme Court a high level of independence that has its merits and shortcomings (Baum, 2003). Concern arises as these checks are rarely enforced; the United States has not yet seen the impeachment of a justice and although the trend is changing, very few appointments are actually rejected (Nix, 2016), (Supreme Court Nominations: present-1789, 2017). While the Unites States has witnessed a moderately positive judicial influence, the path to corruption widens considerably in the presence of high levels of independence within a governmental body. Independence, while necessary to governmental maintenance, necessitates oversight; a cohesive government must “control the governed; and in the next place … control itself”, exhibiting independence while limiting totalitarian instincts (Publius, 2008). Concerns also arise when analyzing the origin of judicial review; namely the capacity of the Supreme Court to independently establish it. Due to its absence within the original Constitution, the establishment of judicial review was subsequent to the Constitution’s implementation. In the famous 1803 Marbury v Madison case the Supreme Court itself established the ability to declare laws unconstitutional, thus setting a precedent of the court’s potential to expand its own power without limit. The ability of the Supreme Court to expand its authority inherently defies the nature of checks and balances by allowing for exponential growth of its jurisdiction and power without checks by the Executive or