[Cons] Article 3, Section 1 (1 of 10) Actual Breakdown of the Text, General Thoughts

The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.

It is evidently clear from the creation of the document, both in the size of the article and the flexibility of interpretation, that of the three major branches, the authors of the constitution gave the least thought to the Supreme Court or to the law in general.  Why would they?  American Courts worked perfectly well in their eyes, and the English legal system was 'the envy of the world.'  While America had revolted against Monarchy and Kings, thus necessitating a new experiment in legislative and executive activities, courts were just, you know...COURTS.  Everyone knew how they worked.  They knew they wanted a supreme court that could decide federal cases, and they knew that it was a good idea to have lesser courts under that.

And they basically said, "Hey congress, you guys just handle this mess, OK?"  They put a few safeguards in that seemed obvious at the time, such as not being able to suddenly state that a judge was earning nothing so congress could destroy their lives, but that's about it really.  Nothing about how many people there were in the court, not about how many courts they should be, and that's about it.

In the other two articles (which I'll address later) they specified which cases were to go to the court, how they were supposed to be tried, and that political cases were specifically in the hands of the legislature...and they defined treason.  That's it.   

So is it any wonder then that our system is so messed up?  The amendment process does add some more guidelines, especially in the Bill of Rights.  At the time, many people thought we didn't need a bill of rights because they didn't want to 'lessen' our rights by defining them.  Can you imagine where we'd be now without it, in this second gilded age?

Due Process would be optional, unless the executive declared it classified and a state secret, oh wait, that was recently declared unconstitutional.  Good luck getting it enforced.  To quote Andrew "I like Genocide" Jackson, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" This is a serious problem in our court system as well.

But as I mentioned in the intro to this article, American justice is a farce.  So aside from the vast amounts of what is NOT written into Article III about how courts should work, is there anything wrong with what IS there?  Not really.  The court is very ill defined, so checks and balances against it are slim at best.  The court, thanks to English Common Law (enshrined into our constitution in the little known 7th amendment), has a tradition of doing things a certain way.  Why do people obey the court? In part because federal judges have tremendous power given them by congress by statute and also by tradition, but in part it is largely because people simply recognize the court as being the final arbiter of these kinds of decisions.

But even that has had to be taken by the court.  Marbury V Madison, in which the court basically said that it had the right to interpret the constitution is even now contested by psychopathic conservatives.  If it isn't written in the document, it isn't acceptable to them.  And really, who am I to disagree? Our courts require lofty standards of documentation and legalisms, which in turn require lofty standards of regulation and arguments, but is it viewed as fair?

The vast majority of the population do not believe so.  So if the court isn't viewed as fair, why do we put up with it? Partly inertia, and partly because we view the alternatives as far worse.  But as I have mentioned earlier, just because 'democracy is the worst form of government except all the others' doesn't mean you don't examine other methods.  Just because Article V strikes terror into the hearts of many for what it could do doesn't mean we timidly fail to explore an alternative to what is clearly a fundamentally unfair and utterly broken process.

And I aim to do just that.