Supreme Court of the United States | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: Subhajit Sahu
Date: 2018-11-18

The Supreme Court of the United States (sometimes colloquially referred to by the acronym SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. Established pursuant to Article III of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, it has original jurisdiction over a small range of cases, such as suits between two or more states, and those involving ambassadors. It also has ultimate (and largely discretionary) appellate jurisdiction over all federal court and state court cases that involve a point of constitutional or federal statutory law. The Court has the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution or an executive act for being unlawful. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction. The Court may decide cases having political overtones, but it has ruled that it does not have power to decide nonjusticiable political questions. Each year it agrees to hear about 100–150 of the more than 7,000 cases that it is asked to review.According to federal statute, the Court normally consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Once appointed, justices have lifetime tenure unless they resign, retire, or are removed from office. Each justice has a single vote in deciding the cases argued before it; the chief justice's vote counts no more than that of any other justice. However, the Chief Justice—when in the majority—decides who writes the court's opinion. Otherwise, the senior justice in the majority assigns the writing of a decision. In modern discourse, the justices are often categorized as having conservative, moderate, or liberal philosophies of law and of judicial interpretation. While a far greater number of cases in recent history have been decided unanimously, decisions in cases of the highest profile have often come down to just one single vote, thereby exposing the justices' ideological beliefs that track with those philosophical or political categories. The Court meets in the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.  Its law-enforcement arm, the United States Marshals Service, is under the oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice.