A Study Of The Political Functions Of The United States Supreme Court

The independence of judicial power and its limitation on executive and legislative powers in American constitutional system has been widely imitated by other countries. Judicial independence means staying away from political strife and interference. However, as impartial judicial arbiter, does the Supreme Court really remain unaffected by political powers as it claims? And how to explain the role it plays as the public policy maker which goes beyond the disputes of specific cases or the political mission it shoulders to influence social development?To solve these doubts, this article will analyze the politicization of the function of Supreme Court in four parts and regard it as an ordinary political body rather than so-called independent judicial organ. Starting from selection and nomination of Justices, which is the internal cause of the Supreme Court’s political function, the first part analyzes how the ideology and judicial or political experience of Justices influence the political preference of the Supreme Court. The second part discusses the external causes that influence the political function of Supreme Court, such as parties, senators, presidents, people and so on, from the aspect of operation of American constitutional system. The third and fourth parts analyze specifically the performance of political functions of Supreme Court respectively from the aspects of its lateral political role and the history of American constitutional system.When we inspect how Supreme Court survived through the separation-of-powers revolution and gained the power of judicial review as the final arbiter, it is not difficult to find that Supreme Court in practice is far from the representative of judicial independence as United States constitution claims. Meanwhile, through inspecting the political functions of Supreme Court, we can comprehensively understand the judicial power of United States constitutional system, which in turn will provide beneficial enlightenment and lessons for the theoretical research of our judicial system revolution.