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AP®︎/College US Government and Politics
Course: AP®︎/College US Government and Politics > Unit 2
Lesson 11: Checks on the judicial branch- Executive and legislative disagreements with the Supreme Court
- Checks on the judicial branch
- State checks on the judicial branch
- Senate confirmation as a check on the judicial branch
- Judicial activism and judicial restraint
- Increased politicization of the Supreme Court
- Checks on the judicial branch: lesson overview
- Checks on the judicial branch: advanced
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Senate confirmation as a check on the judicial branch
The video discusses the process of appointing Supreme Court justices. It highlights the role of the president in nominating justices and the Senate's duty to confirm them. The video uses Justice Sonia Sotomayor's 2009 confirmation hearing as an example, showing the intense questioning nominees face from senators.
Want to join the conversation?
- How does senate confirmation affect judicial decision making?(2 votes)
- So, per Federalist no 78, it doesn't and it shouldn't. The fact that a judgeship is a lifetime appointment means that they are not beholden to the people who confirmed them, so they are under no obligation to vote in any one way because of those who confirmed them.(1 vote)
- What is the process of judicial selection(2 votes)
- the president selects a nominee and should be approved by 2/3 of votes of senate(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] When we think
about how the executive or the legislative branch
have some form of check or power over the judicial branch, a key element of that is
the executive's ability to appoint judges to federal courts, including the US Supreme Court. But it's not just that
the president can decide who gets to be a justice; they have to be confirmed by the Senate. And what you see over here,
what I'm about to play, are the confirmation hearings from Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, and what I hope you get from
it is it's not an easy process. This is going to be a question
from Senator Chuck Grassley, who's a Republican from Iowa, and he's going to be asking
about whether marriage is a state or a federal question. - So, do you agree that
marriage is a question reserved for the states to
decide, based on Baker v. Nelson? - That also is a question
that's pending and impending in many courts. As you know, the issue of
marriage and what constitutes it is a subject of much public discussion, and there's a number of
cases in state courts addressing the issue of who
regulates it, under what terms-- - Can I please interrupt you? I thought I was asking
a very simple question based upon a precedent
that Baker v. Nelson is, based on the proposition that yesterday, in so many cases, whether it was Griswold, whether it was Roe v. Wade,
whether it was Chevron, whether it's a whole bunch of other cases that you made reference
to, the Casey case, the Gonzales case, the Leegin Creative Leather
Products case, the Kelo case. You made that case to me. You said these are precedents. Now, are you saying to me that Baker v. Nelson is not a precedent? - No sir, I just haven't
reviewed Baker in a while. And so, I actually don't
know what the status is. If it is the court's precedent, as I've indicated in all of my answers, I will apply that precedent to the facts of any new
situation that implicates it. Always, the first question for a judge-- - Well then, tell me
what sort of a process you might go through-- - [Instructor] So anyway, you can see that this is not an easy process. And in this situation, you have an appointment
by a Democratic president and you have questions
from a Republican senator, and this is fairly typical. They're likely to ask
more pointed questions and try to get the appointee to trip up. And if you were to see questions
from a Democratic senator, they'd be more likely to ask questions that would make the nominee
look a little bit better, and that tends to always be the case. If it's from the same party, they tend to try to smooth the process, while the opposition party tries to make it a little
bit more difficult. And an interesting thing to
think about is Justice Sotomayor eventually does get appointed
to the Supreme Court, but what was the goal
of Senator Grassley here in asking these questions, even if he knew that she was eventually
going to be appointed? There's other themes
that we've talked about in government that he might be playing to. He might be asking these questions
more for his constituents or there might be an element of, even if a Supreme Court justice
is going to be appointed, at the end of the day, there's also the court of
public opinion, so to speak, and these might be opportunities
to sow some seeds of doubt or to make it a little bit more difficult for a Supreme Court justice to, in the future, vote one way or another based on what they say
during these hearings. Interesting things to talk about.