Planning 'Supreme Court - is it problematic to have an unelected body have so much power?'

• no - subjected by checks from congress and president
• yes - Roe vs. Wade (1973), court declared women had the constitutional right for abortion, case of Baker vs. Carr (1962) illustrated ability of court to interpret constitutional principles broadly
• yes - gerrymandering - where it opposes fifteenth amendment of voting equal rights, term denies this by disadvantageous, artificial creation of electoral boundaries = therefore, due to liberal interpretation of constitution supreme court established new political principle 

"the court has systematically done its best to undermine everything they care about for the past 40 years" - Larry Kramer, constitutional historian - 

The Supreme Court’s Power Has Become Excessive, The New York Times

 Do same-sex couples think they had no rights before the Supreme Court spoke, and have rights after only because five justices said so? 

fundamental law of the land, made by “We, the People,” depends on the ideologically driven whims of five lawyers? 

There is a place for judicial review in constitutional democracy, just not for judicial supremacy.

 idea that the justices have final say over the meaning of our Constitution — that once they have spoken, no matter what they say, our only recourse is the nearly impossible task of amending the Constitution or waiting for some of them to change their minds or die or retire — ought to offend anyone who believes in democratic government.

 myth: that the court needs this overweening power to protect minorities. Yes, the court has occasionally done so, but much more often it has done the opposite. Time and time again, we have seen it take political movements and legislation to get rights and make them secure. Virtually no progress was made on race, after all, until Congress enacted the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 — laws the Supreme Court has been working hard for years to weaken and destroy. That the people who wrote and ratified our Constitution wanted or expected the court to have such power is a fairy tale. They emphatically did not fight a revolution to replace a monarchy with an oligarchy. 

Politics Exam Questions

1. Presidental power - whether dependent on individual presidents?
2. US congress - why is it hard to get get things passed through congress?
3. Supreme Court - is it problematic to have an unelected body with so much power?
4. Federalism and its development since the 60s.
5. Recent election results - why congressional and presidential elections have been so different?
6. Media influence in presidential elections  across the whole campaign.
7. Interest groups - how they operate, pluralism. Positive? Negative?
8. Foreign policy - how it gets created?

Focus on two questions:

3. Supreme Court - is it problematic to have an unelected body with so much power?

• you should ask whether it's unelected and unaccountable
• how problematic is it
• is it valuable or is it too powerful in terms of it being 9 people
• MUST talk about why it is problematic first

8. Foreign policy - how it gets created?

Preparation for History Essay

Title: Why did non-slave holding white people in the South support slavery?

Paragraph 1:

•  If new states could not be slave states = only a matter of time before the South’s clout in Congress would fade = abolitionists would be ascendant = and the South’s “peculiar institution” – the right to own human beings as property – would be in peril.
• Abraham Lincoln's election as president = opposition to the expansion of slavery into the territories; Southern politicians were clear about that. 
• South of 1860 
• 4 million enslaved human beings lived in the south, and they touched every aspect of the region’s social, political, and economic life. 
• Slaves did not just work on plantations.  In cities such as Charleston, they cleaned the streets, toiled as bricklayers, carpenters, blacksmiths, bakers, and laborers.  They worked as dockhands and stevedores, grew and sold produce, purchased goods and carted them back to their masters’ homes where they cooked the meals, cleaned, raised the children, and tended to the daily chores.  
• “Charleston looks more like a Negro country than a country settled by white people,” a visitor remarked.
• Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850
• As Southerners became increasingly isolated, they reacted by becoming more strident in defending slavery. P2
• Controlling the slave population was a matter of concern for all Whites, whether they owned slaves or not. 
• comitted to preventing rebellion