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The Supreme Court is the highest institution of justice in the United States that has a special role in the system of the American government. Its ultimate goal consists in solving all ambiguous cases emerging as a result of a violation of constitutional rights. It is empowered to interpret laws and questions the actions of the President and Congress to prevent violation of the Constitution. The Court’s major mission is to ensure equal justice under law to American society (Bartels & Johnston, 2013).
The criminal justice system receives unprecedented attention in the Supreme Court as very few courts in the world have the same scope of power and none of them managed to exercise it for such a long period. The unlimited influence stems from the fact that the American society is deeply committed to the adherence to criminal law guarded by the oldest written Constitution (that is still in force at present) under the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments (Cole, Smith, & DeJong, 2015).
Since World War II, the criminal law of the US has undergone dramatic transformations due to the decisions taken by the Supreme Court during the tenure of Earl Warren in the position of Chief Justice. His policies resulted in the following positive changes for the criminal justice system (McCloskey & Levinson, 2016):
- obligatory notification of rights;
- improved questioning procedure (introduction of Miranda Rights) and confessions;
- legal search and arrest permission;
- right for counseling for indigents;
- protection of the accused from abusive practices of the government;
- the guarantee that the accused will not receive excessive punishment of any sort.
Although the Supreme Court currently provides the “best practices” approach to criminal law and demonstrates successful results, certain reforms can be introduced to improve the effectiveness of its performance. They include (McCloskey & Levinson, 2016):
- clarifying the position and role of the Supreme Court as many of its mistakes appear as a result of a vague articulation of the Court’s major power to enforce the law against the will of the majority;
- selecting justices according to their merit; this reform may imply appointing candidates that do not come from the Ivy League – the step that would help the Court avoid unnecessary elitism and allow creating ideologically diverse panels;
- imposing term limits and non-renewable terms for judges as now the term may turn out to be too long due to the increased life expectancy;
- giving preference to older nominees as they are likely to have more well-established views of the criminal systems whereas younger candidates still need time for their perception to evolve;
- promoting ethical immaculacy of the Court through the development of a set of ethical standards, which would help eliminate the possibility of rumors concerning ethical transgressions that create a lot of controversies especially in criminal cases;
- introducing the system of anonymous opinions that would exclude the judges’ interests in publicity created by the mass media and encourage them to be more objective.
In addition to the enumerated measures, the Supreme Court’s role of an over-arching institution responsible for the interpretation of the criminal law to the entire nation should be reinforced. All lower courts should coordinate their actions and decisions with the Supreme Court’s standards of excellence. Since it often deals with human lives and therefore involves severe punishments and even death penalty, the criminal law should permit no other interpretation by local courts. However, the operation of the highest Court in the country does not mean that law institutions at the local, county, state, and regional levels are redundant. Their practices are no less significant as the number of minor cases of law violation is much higher than the number of serious criminal offenses. By doing their job, they save the Supreme Court’s effort and time required for the solution of more important cases (Clark & Kastellec, 2013).
References
Bartels, B. L., & Johnston, C. D. (2013). On the ideological foundations of Supreme Court legitimacy in the American public. American Journal of Political Science, 57(1), 184-199.
Clark, T. S., & Kastellec, J. P. (2013). The Supreme Court and percolation in the lower courts: an optimal stopping model. The Journal of Politics, 75(01), 150-168.
Cole, G. F., Smith, C. E., & DeJong, C. (2015). The American system of criminal justice. New York, NY: Nelson Education.
McCloskey, R. G., & Levinson, S. (2016). The American supreme court. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
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