Wendsay Septmeber 2nd, 2026 

Supreme Court History

Supreme Court Video Notes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWRoXYRsaeo

The Supreme Court's Long and very
Complicated History;

Every president who has ever sat in the Oval Office has always tried to leave there mark on the Supreme Court through nominations. Nominations are one of the ways a president's can have a lingerning influence that can outlast their own time in office.

Through my research I was able to learn that; since the Supreme Court's Founding, there has only been only 116 justices that have served. With the average term laststing around 16 years with plenty of justices doubling that number throughout history and by doing so helping to shape the law for there generation and the future generation.

John Marshal, Chief Justice, 1803

Even though becoming a Supreme Court Justices is one of the most prestige jobs in the United States Governemnt there has been some justices that have left huge impacts compared to there fellow justices.One of thoes people who left a huge impact was Supreme Court Jutices John Marshall was the first Justice to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional, which in turn establish the Court's power of judicial review in a way that its role today is clear and conscie.

But there has been many ruling that have not aged well one being the Dreed Scott case.

The Dred Scott decision is one of the most widely regarded cases and many view as the Court's biggest mistake. The outrage following the court ruling regarding the case costed the Court to lose significant public trust and authority and this case showed that even the nation's highest court is still able to get cases wrong and they are not alawys correct.

A lot of what goes into what makes the Court's job so difficult is its founding document itself. Supreme Court Justice are tasked with one of the hardest jobs one can have in the United States Government interpreting a constitution that is over 200 years old and with centuries-old language and idologys they have to use this to dispute modern cases and look at these cases with diffrent perspectives, morals, and knowledge its authors never could have imagined.

This is where many oral arguments tend to happen and come into the picture.

Attorneys job is not just to argue before the Court they need to have logical sounding arguments that are not just sound, but are persuasive and in turn powerful enough to sway the way justices' are thinking in real time.

And once a decision is made, it never stays quiet for long becuase as the most powerful court in the United States Government every decision they make is looked at with microscoped eyes.

After a decision written opinions are almost always immediately released to the press, and within hours and sometimes even minuets depending on how popular the case is the ruling is already on air or in print, becoming world wide news almost instantly.

What The Supreme Court's history really is a story about power: who shapes it who has the power to challenge it, and how fragile its power can wavery when something goes wrong.

AI DISCLOSURE: AI was used in a limited way in the assignment; I took ample notes while watching a twenty-minute video about the US Supreme Court. I then personalized those notes by adding my point of view, for example, things I learned or found surprising.  I than used Claude.AI to help me clean up the text for grammar spelling and punctuation, and I also asked the tool to help me shape it into the form of a blog post.  I then edited the text added links and added images with end captions.