From the video shown in class about the inner workings and history of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), I learned that it is the most powerful judicial body on earth, they only take about one hundred cases each year, and that they do so few cases because the opinion writing portion of their work is the most time-consuming aspect of the job and can take months. Of these, the most surprising was certainly the fact that SCOTUS only takes about a hundred cases every year. Upon first hearing this, I was pretty shocked that it could take nine Justices a whole year to cover seemingly so few cases, but the added knowledge of the amount of time it takes to write their official opinions made one hundred seem like a very high volume of cases.
I was previously aware, in a much vaguer sense, that SCOTUS only handles a few cases each year from my countless hours listening to true crime podcasts such as Crime Junkie, from which the most memorable instance regarding the Supreme Court was learning that Miranda v. Arizona, the precedent-setting case that produced the term Miranda rights, almost didn’t make it onto the Justices’ desks but for its alphabetical placement. This, to me, begs the question of how many potentially system-altering cases go untouched by SCOTUS each year just due to time constraints.
My main takeaway after watching the video is a newfound sense of gravity and volume of the work done by the Justices. I had never thought critically about the weight of the position—I, of course, *knew* that their jobs are very important and their decisions affect a lot of things and people, but only in a passing, uninterested sense, not unlike the way I *know* most things that were taught in high school civics and government. The video has given me a greater depth of knowledge by providing an intimate look at the functions and members of the Supreme Court. Additionally, the idea of the RBG being “nervous” to speak before anyone, Supreme Court included, is astonishing in light of her accomplishments since that nervous, lunchless day.
