The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest authority in the country's judicial system. The court's primary role is to interpret the US Constitution and ensure laws and policies align with the nation's founding legal document. It also resolves legal disputes involving the federal government's authority and serves as the final appellate body, hearing appeals from lower federal and state courts.
Hours of research by our editors, distilled into minutes of clarity.
A court designed to be the least powerful branch became one of the most influential institutions in history. 1440 Explores host Sony Kassam dives inside the Supreme Court of the United States, with help from Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar, to uncover how it gained extraordinary authority, what really happens behind closed doors, and why its power has become one of the most fiercely contested questions in modern democracy.
Founded in 2002, SCOTUSblog offers expert analysis from lawyers, professors, and journalists. The blog provides transparent, unbiased explanations of significant cases, real-time updates on decisions, and insights into court nominations and trends.
Hear from experts about originalism—the view that the Constitution should be interpreted according to its original public meaning—alongside its main counter-ideology, living constitutionalism, which argues that the document's meaning should evolve with changing social and legal norms.
Browse by constitutional topic to explore key rulings, their historical impact, and the legal principles they established. Each case includes a summary of the decision, along with notable excerpts from majority and dissenting opinions.
This resource profiles each sitting justice, detailing their legal backgrounds and career paths, and offers audio clips from oral arguments that reveal how they reason and speak from the bench.
The act created a six-member Supreme Court, district courts, and circuit courts. It delineated the jurisdiction of these courts and outlined the relationship between state and federal courts. This resource has a comprehensive explanation and the full transcript of the bill.
In a 2009 conversation, former Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen G. Breyer lay out competing approaches to constitutional interpretation: Scalia's textualist, strict constructionism versus Breyer's evolutionary view of the Constitution in practice.
The Constitution grants Supreme Court justices lifetime appointments to shield them from electoral politics and outside pressure, a design meant to preserve judicial independence but now widely debated due to longer lifespans and partisan balances of the court.
This podcast episode examines Baker v. Carr, a landmark redistricting ruling that Earl Warren called the most important of his tenure. The case was so divisive it triggered a justice's breakdown and permanently reshaped American democracy.
Former US Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia had a friendship that fascinated the country. The unsuspecting bond formed between people on two opposing ends of the political spectrum even inspired an opera titled “Scalia/Ginsburg” by composer Derrick Wang.
Become informed on key topics that help you participate in the world around you