Blog Post #2

     I just read an article on the Supreme Court. It was pretty interesting and I learned quite a bit. My favorite piece of information in the article is that William Howard Taft is the only person to have served as President and Chief Justice. I am a huge William Howard Taft fan so this made me happy. I also learned that the Chief Justice resigns over trials of impeachment of the US President. This makes total sense, I just never thought about who would be in charge of that. 

    The most important takeaway point about the Supreme Court is all of the incredibly important cases they have determined. They have established laws over issues such as abortion, segregation, and anti-sodomy. Without the Supreme Court, these important issues as well as other similar ones would likely have been dealt with in completely different ways.

    The most surprising thing I learned was that the Supreme Court Justices were nominated by the President. Part of the Justices' job includes keeping the president in check so this seems like it could potentially be a problem. Granted, the decision must be confirmed or denied by the Senate so that takes away a little bit of power. Still, this feels like a rare instance where the president might have just a bit too much power. I may be missing something but here is a hypothetical: What if the Chief Justice steps down. The president picks a new chief justice and picks some guy he's known for forever. The senate says "This guy seems great" so they approve him. A year later, the president does something pretty wrong and he probably shouldn't be the president anymore. They have an impeachment trial but, uh oh, the guy in charge of impeaching the president is his best friend and would never do something like that. This means a bad president who should be out of office serves the rest of his term because his buddy has his back. The government people are probably smarter than I am, and I'm sure that's not actually how the law works. But if it is, and there are no flaws in my argument then someone should do something about this.

    The last question is "How did the video change the way you thought of the Supreme Court?" Personally, I did not watch a video and instead read the article. Therefore, the video did not change my thoughts on the Supreme Court whatsoever because I did not watch the video. The article, however, made me view the Supreme Court as a kind of final option. It's like when there's an argument at school and you ask the teacher. Their word is final and they are right about everything. I like the Supreme Court!