Research Paper on:
The Structure and Importance of the Supreme Court

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
listed below. Citation styles constantly change, and these examples may not contain the most recent updates. The Structure and Importance of the Supreme Court Research Compiled  by K. Von Huben 8/2010 Please Introduction The Supreme Court of the United States is often  called the "court of last resort," since it is the highest court in the nation. This paper considers how the court is structured, the cases it considers and other matters.  Discussion Purpose: The Supreme Court is unique in that it considers only two types of cases: those involving federal law and those involving Constitutional law (Meyer & Grant, 2003).  It does not intervene in matters at the local, county or state level. Structure and personnel: The Court is composed of nine justices who are appointed by the President; they  serve for life (Meyer & Grant, 2003). Since presidents appoint justices who tend to share their political ideology, Republican presidents appoint conservatives and Democratic presidents appoint liberals, in so far  as those labels have any meaning. Although the justices are supposed to remain impartial, its difficult to avoid the suspicion that they follow their own ideology more often than not,  making decisions according to their political beliefs rather than judging cases strictly on their merits. Fortunately, the differences among the justices usually keeps the Court fairly balanced. Process: Unlike all  other courts, the Supremes (as they are sometimes called by those not particularly enamored of them) dont have to hear all the cases that come before them; instead, it considers  the requests for certiorari (review) that are submitted to it, and picks those cases that at least four justices agree to consider (Meyer & Grant, 2003). Since it doesnt review