SCOTUS/Constitution/ShapingUSA

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Alexander Hamilton, in making his pitch for ratification of the Constitution, wrote in The Federalist No.78: "Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.... It proves incontestably, that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power." Hamilton's soothing minimalist assurances notwithstanding, Chief Justice John Marshall proved not only to be a major annoyance to President Jefferson (and Congress, as well as State governors, legislatures and judges); he established the until-then quiescent Supreme Court as a power center. On and on it went. This course takes a contra-Rushmorean approach to the exercise of power in the United States. Tracing the development of the nation through key Supreme Court decisions from Marbury v. Madison to the Fall 2023 Term of the Court that concludes in June 2024, it focuses on the unelected power center at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. Consider: Marshall, not Jefferson, laid the groundwork for the modern American nation by articulating decidedly non-Jeffersonian concepts in Marbury and McCulloch. Earl Warren, not Congress or the President, reinvigorated the Fourteenth Amendment and implemented the Second Reconstruction through Brown v. Board of Education. And Warren Burger toppled a vast criminal enterprise operated out of the Oval Office, saying in essence, the emperor is not clothed in executive privilege Teflon (United States v. Nixon). So much for "the weakest branch." On and on it goes.