Assignment 1: Decision-Making Process of the Supreme Court
The U.S Supreme Court forms one of the three political institutions in the United States’ structure of the federal government. In the system of separated powers, the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of some of the country’s important legal and political issues. The U.S. Supreme Court is considered the nation’s most powerful branch of the three branches of the federal government. Some of the major case decided by the Supreme Court include Bush v. Gore on the decision of presidential election outcome. National Federation of Independence Business v. Sebelius on universal health care, Lawrence v. Texas on the liberty of same-sex couples, and Shelby County v. Holder on the voting rights of minorities.
The decision-process of the Supreme Court is policy-oriented. When making a decision, the court has to account for the preferences of their immediate colleagues, of actors beyond the court and institutional norms and rules. The first step is establishing the goals of the justices involved. Most justices seek principled decision and decision that will sustain the court’s legitimacy. However, a policy is often the main goal of the Supreme Court justices. Justices have to ask certain questions during a proceeding which bend towards certain policies that must be adhered to. Scholars have established a policy-voting consistency among justices over the years. The justices provide a bargaining statement in the opinion-writing phase so that to demonstrate the policies that are driving the justices’ decisions and opinions.
The justices are strategic in their ruling because the attitudinal model of the Supreme Court decision-making process portrays justices as unconstrained in their prowess to vote for their most preferred policy outcomes because they enjoy the life tenure. As such, justices of the Supreme Court can vote for their most preferred policies without fear of consequences because they are exempted from any political ambitions or re-election into the Supreme Court. However, individual justice cannot make a difference on a policy because a minimum of five justices are required to concur for a ruling to hold. They often pay attention to the decision set by their precedent justices such as preferences and actions of their immediate colleagues.
Litigation has to be applied successfully to be accepted for review in the Supreme Court. One has to submit briefs of the case twice to the Supreme Court justices who then will decide on merits who should win the case. Once the court has accepted the case, the petitioner has 45 days to file the merits of the brief and the respondent is given 30 days after that to submit their side of the brief. The respondent’s submission must be submitted a week before the oral arguments are heard. The justices will then sit for oral arguments once the parties have filed their legal briefs to the court. The attorneys for each party are then allowed to present their best arguments to the justices to convince the court to rule in their favour based on merits. This is the most important part of the proceedings, especially to the justices.
The justices then hold a conference discussion which is meant to determine the voting on the already argued case in court. Justices discuss the key points in the case presented and link to the policies associated with the case. Justices are often bound by the norm of respecting past decisions because they discuss precedents at the conference. Depending on the voting pattern, the justice who writes the majority opinion is selected and has the authority to select who writes the minority opinion. The prerogative is very important, especially where a policy has a prospective loss.
Assignment 2: The Electoral College System
In the U.S election system, when ballots are cast for the president, they are actually voting for a representative of that candidate’s party known as an elector. The U.S has 538 electors who make up the electoral college system and vote for the president on behalf of their state. Each state has a certain number of electoral colleges based on the number of congressional districts in each state. The electors involve two additional senate representatives from the Senate seat. Washington DC has three electoral colleges despite having no representation in Congress. In the elections, a president is elected once he or she gunners more than 270 electoral colleges.
The process of elector nominations is subject to state laws and vary from state to state. Ahead of the elections, parties often choose electors as their national conventions or through the party’s central committee. The system operates nearly always as the winner in the state takes all the colleges. The candidate with the highest popular votes claims the state’s electoral colleges. In 2016, Trump beat Clinton by a small margin of 2.2% but still claimed all the electoral votes from the state. Trump managed to beat Clinton by small margins in key swing states which gave him more electoral votes despite Clinton having the popular vote.
Scholars are argued of the unequal distribution of electoral votes. Each state has a minimum of three electoral votes which means that the relative value of the votes varies across the country. North and South Dakota have often overrepresented which states with a high population such as California and Florida are underrepresented in the electoral college system. Wyoming for example has one electoral vote for every 190, 000 people whereas in California a single electoral vote represents 700, 000 people. Such flaws in the electoral college system have been flagged because it has favoured two presidents who did not win the popular vote. Critics have argued that the electoral college violates the core tenet of democracy because the country has seen two cases where a president came second in the popular vote but still clinched the presidency seat because of having more electoral colleges. The electoral voting system is said to be benefiting the Republicans more than the Democrats because the Republican states hold more electors compared to Democratic-controlled states.
The electoral college follows the winner-takes-all system which means margins in state victory often become irrelevant. In 2016, substantial margins by Clinton in New York and California did not give her the electoral votes required to clinch her win despite winning the popular vote. However, small margins in Michigan and Pennsylvania enabled Trump to go over the 270 electoral votes needed to win the elections. Most of the solid Republican states such as Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin helped Trump win in 2016 because they had a total of 99 electoral votes. The demographics of these states such as having a high number of whites favoured Trump.
Assignment 3: Checks and Balances within the U.S. Constitution: Federalism
The principle of checks and balances in the U.S government serves the purpose of ensuring that no arm of the government would become too powerful than the other. the U.S constitution divides the powers of the government into three branches: the legislative branch, executive branch and the judicial branch. Federalism falls under the executive branch of the government headed by the President. The president’s power unlike the common knowledge in most citizens is not to influence people to adopt his or her governance. The president’s powers must be inductive towards the citizens through nurturing and delivering on the individual appraisals of their best interests for the nation. The president serves as the commander in chief of the military forces. However, under the check and balance system, Congress appropriates the funds used in military actions and votes on war declaration. The president is in control of the military but without the support of the legislative branch, he or she cannot do as much with the powers. Congress is mandated by the constitution to pursue and control the money used in any executive actions by the President. The federal government through the president nominates the federal officials but they have to be vetted by the Senate to confirm the nominations. In the legislative branch, Congress serves as a check on possible abuse of power by the federal branch. Pocket veto involves a chief executive officer failing to deliver on his or her obligations in the set period following an adjournment of the legislature. In the U.S. if any president takes more than 10 days without signing a bill passed through Congress it automatically becomes a law (Hoff, 2019). However, when Congress adjourns within the 10-day timespan with the president not signing the bill, the bill is automatically vetoed. This is referred to as a pocket veto.
Competitive dual federalism has become the new federalism in the U.S. whereby responsibilities are assigned based on whether the federal government of the state government is the best to handle a policy. The Supreme Court defended dual federalism in 1895 after holding that the federal government could only regulate matters directly linked to interstate commerce. However, crises such as the Great Depression tolled the death knell for dual federalism because the states had to cooperate with the federal government in working together towards responding to the nation’s economic state. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 came up with a new deal for Americans citing that the federal government could restore the economy better than the state government or local authorities. The deal involved wages and prices, building and construction projects, developing national parts and create artworks. During the 1960s, the national government moved increasingly into areas once reserved to the states. As a result, the essence of federalism today is competition rather than cooperation.