Blog Post #2

I decided to read the article assigned. Going into this assignment, I did not know much about the Supreme Court other than what I had learned in middle school. I found this article to be super interesting and informative. I assumed that the Supreme Court was established when the Declaration of Independence was made in 1776. I learned that the Supreme Court was created in 1789, not from the Declaration of Independence but from Article Three of the U.S. Constitution. 

The most important takeaway I got was how important the Chief Justice is. I thought that the Chief Justice's sole purpose was to declare a ruling when there was a hung jury. This article taught me that the Chief Justice has many more responsibilities. For example, the Chief Justice has to manage all of the Justices and set up weekly meetings.  Additionally, if the Chief Justice sided with the winning ruling, they get to decide who writes the court's final decision. Most importantly, the Chief Justice presides over presidential impeachment trials. 

Before reading this, I thought that the Supreme Court always consisted of nine justices; however, I learned that it originally was made up of six judges. What I found surprising about this information was the fact that the number of justices was originally an even number. This does not make sense to me because then the vote can be split, and therefore, the ruling would be indecisive. Since 1869, there has been nine Supreme Court judges consecutively. Before that, the number of Supreme Court Justices has varied throughout the years. The least amount of Justices there has ever been is five, and the most amount of Justices there has been was ten. Since the Supreme Court was established in 1789, in total, one hundred and fifteen Justices have served. 

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