What are the Qualifications set in place for a justice to be able to be selected onto the United States Supreme Court? A simple way of explaining how the Supreme Court justices are selected is that the President of the United States nominates a justice when there is an open spot on the Court. Next, the Senate must also vote in favor of the justice to be able to be part of the United States Supreme Court.
There is a common misconception that there are a lot of requirements in place in order to become a justice. There are hardly any specific requirements set in place to be a justice on the Supreme Court. It is recommended that justices be well versed in law and as a result, almost all of the justices that have ever been on the Supreme Court have attended law school. An extensive amount of legal knowledge is needed for this position which is a given, but law school is not necessarily a requirement. The last justice that served on the Supreme Court that had not attended law school was in 1942.
Aside from that, there are not any age, gender, education, citizenship, and previous profession requirements for the justices selected. Unlike other positions in the U.S. government, justices do not have to be re-elected or restricted to serve for a set amount of time. Once selected, a justice can serve for the rest of their life as long as they are not impeached.
Now that the justices have been selected and the Court is filled, how does a case reach the Supreme Court? The Supreme Court has a unique makeup. There are nine people in total: including a supreme justice and eight associate justices. The Supreme Court only works on about 100 cases out of the thousands they receive each year. The Supreme Court is able to vote and decide on which cases they want to work on.
How do you send a request to the Supreme Court? The party making the request to send the case up to the Supreme Court must request for a writ of certiorari. A writ of certiorari is defined by Cornell Law as: “A writ of certiorari orders a lower court to deliver its record in a case so that the higher court may review it. The U.S. Supreme Court uses certiorari to select most of the cases it hears.”
These cases are split up evenly between justices and their law clerks in hopes of being able to get through as many cases as possible. The clerks do research for the justices and aid them in deciding on whether or not a case should be worked on. During a weekly meeting the justices vote together on whether or not to officially work on a case. Since these cases were reviewed separately by different justices, this is when all the justices collectively decide which cases to take in. Only a simple majority of the justices need to vote on a case for it to be taken in.
Most of the supreme court cases are appeals as mentioned in previous blog posts. The Miranda v. Arizona and the Burns v. Town of Palm Beach cases are both great examples of appeals cases that made it to the Supreme Court.
Most of these cases have a common theme which is: was the case resolved in a way that agrees with the constitution? A constitutional resolution is the main goal for these types of cases. As mentioned in the previous examples above, these cases had issues with the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. That was most likely why these cases were selected by the Supreme Court. Settling these cases in a constitutionally sound matter is critical because these decisions set legal precedents.
By Elidia Magaña
.png){kind=small}
Comments