AQA A-level POLITICS Paper 2 Government and politics of the USA and comparative politics

AQA A-level POLITICS Paper 2 Government and politics of the USA and comparative politics The appointment of a Supreme Court Justice is an event of major significance in American politics. Congressional Research Service Report, June 2018 (a report prepared for members of Congress) on the Supreme Court Appointment Process. Each appointment is of consequence because of the enormous judicial power the Supreme Court exercises as the highest appellate court in the federal judiciary. Under the US Constitution, Justices on the Supreme Court receive what can amount to lifetime appointments which, by constitutional design, helps ensure the Court’s independence from the President and Congress. The Senate through its “Advice and Consent” function acts as a safeguard on the President’s judgement. Closely related to the expectation that a Supreme Court nominee will have excellent professional qualifications are the ideals of integrity and impartiality in a nominee. Accordingly, Presidents will often cite such qualities, as President Obama did when announcing his nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Court, noting both her “mastery of the law” and “a commitment to impartial justice”. Extract from Congressional Research Service Report, June 2018 Who are the Federalist Society? How a group of conservative law students have come to dominate the judicial nomination process, by Sophie McBain, North American correspondent for the New Statesman (a centre-left UK political magazine), September 2018. Brett Kavanaugh, the newest Supreme Court Justice, is one of five of the nine Supreme Court justices who are members of the Federalist Society. The Society is made up of lawyers who promote a strict constructionist view of the US Constitution. Its first advisers were Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia who were nominated by President Reagan. In 2018 the Trump administration asked the Society to draw up a list of potential Supreme Court nominees for the president’s consideration, which included Kavanaugh. Steven Teles, the author of Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law has argued Trump effectively gave the task of filling the vacancy to the Federalist Society. Teles says that ‘it used to be that Senators played an important role in judicial appointments’ but by doing so Trump could be sure the Federalist Society would put forward people who appeal to his social conservative base.