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Hank Chau

Gareth Manning
AP US Government
April 6, 2016
Chapter 14
1. The Federal Judicial System:
a. All federal judges are nominated and appointed to office by the president,
subject to confirmation by majority vote in the Senate
b. The Constitution places no age, residency, or citizenship requirements on the
office of federal judge
c. Not does the Constitution require judges to have legal training, though by
tradition they do
d. Whereas congressional power rests on spending authority, and presidential
power rests on control of military, judicial power rests on what Hamilton
called judgment the reasonableness and fairness of its decisions
2. The State Courts
a. Like the federal courts, state court systems have trial courts at the bottom level
and appellate courts at the top
b. Each state decides for itself the structure of its courts and the method of
selecting judges
c. The federal court accepts the facts determined by the state court unless such
finding are clearly in error
d. Also disinclined, when a provision of federal law does not clearly resolves a
case, to substitute their own interpretation of a states law for that applied by
the state court
e. Issues traditionally within the jurisdiction of the states can become federal
issues through the rulings of federal courts
3. The Nature of Judicial Decision Making
a. Legal Influences on Judicial Decisions
b. Article III of the Constitution bars a federal court from issuing a decision
except in response to a case presented to it
c. It limits judges to issues that arise from actual legal disputes
d. The US legal system developed from the English commonlaw tradition,
which includes the principle that a courts decision on a case should be
consistent with previous judicial rulings
e. This principle, known as precedent, reflects the philosophy of star diesis
4. Political Influences on Judicial Decisions
a. Adherence to the law in the judging of case is what gives substance to the
claim that the US is governed by the rule of law
b. The law is not always a precise guide to judicial decisions, with the result that
judges have some leeway in their rulings
c. Political influences affect how judges decide cases in which they have leeway
d. Inside the Court: Judges Political Beliefs:
i. Changes in the Supreme Courts membership can bring about a change
in its position
ii. Justices tend to vote in line with their political attitudes
iii. Disputes that reach the Supreme Court are anything but clearout

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iv. The fact that Republican appointees to the Supreme Court are more
likely than Democratic appointees to side with law enforcement
officials than with the criminally accused does not mean that they
invariably do so that they are unmindful of legal restraints on law
enforcement officials
Judicial Power and Democratic Government
a. This power is most dramatically evident when courts declare laws enacted by
Congress to be unconstitutional
b. Unelected judges substitute their judgment for that of the peoples elected
representatives
c. The judiciarys power has been a source of controversy throughout the
nations history, but the debate has seldom been livelier than during recent
decades
d. The judiciary has become more extensively involved in policymaking for
many of the same reasons that Congress and the president have been thrust
into new policy areas and become more deeply involved in old ones
Original Theory vs. Living Constitution Theory:
a. Original-ism theory, a prominent philosophy of conservatives, holds that the
Constitution should be interpreted in the way that a reasonable person would
have interpreted it at the time it was written
Proponents of the living constitution theory claim that the framers, through the use of
broad language and basic principles, intended the Constitution to be an adaptable
instrument
Judicial Restraint versus Judicial Activism
a. The doctrine of judicial restraint holds that judges should generally defer to
precedent and to decisions made by legislatures
b. Although advocates of judicial activism acknowledge the importance of
majority rule, they claim that the courts should not blindly defer to the
decisions of elected officials when core principlessuch as liberty, equality,
and selfgovernmentare threatened
c. They also contend that precedent should be respected only if its based on legal
reasoning that is as should today as it was when the precedent was decided

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