1.In what ways is the court system better suited to protect the individual, than are the elected branches of government (such as congress and the president or the mayor of NYC and the NYC city assembly)? Give an example to illustrate your argument.-The court system is better at protecting individual rights over the elected branches of the government due to the fact that typically judges will make their decision based on the law instead of something like politics since typically elected officials to an extent have to do things in order to keep their position since largely the reason they make certain decision (whether they actually agree with it or not), unlike judges who on the other hand since they are appointed they usually stay judges for long terms and don’t have to worry about doing things to remain in their position. A example of how the court system is better suited to protect an individual was the Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. This was because even though there was a lot of elected officials that supported segregation (because of the time period) the Supreme Court ended racial segregation in America due to the 14th amendment.

2.Think about how federal judges get to become judges – unlike Presidents, Mayors and members of Congress (and other legislatures), they are not elected, but rather appointed. Many Americans have thus called the federal courts system, and especially the Supreme Court, anti-democratic PLACES IN OUR GOVERNMENT. Do you agree that the Supreme Court, for example, is an anti-democratic part of our government? What could be the reason for this way of choosing judges in federal courts? (HINT: think about our discussion of “Federalist #10”, and which social class plays a leading role in our government system.)-One of the reasons that many people consider the Supreme Court to be anti-democratic is due to the fact that judges are appointed, not elected, which means they strictly stick to the law and constitution when it comes to choosing judges rather than political influence. The thing is however we vote for a majority of things in our government, so since we don’t vote specifically for the judges appointed it doesn’t represent the citizens of the United States and what they may want. However I do agree with the supreme courts way of choosing its judges even though it may seem anti-democratic since we don’t elect them directly, but choosing appointing its judges based on the law and constitution over political influence is a good thing since political influence usually can cause elected officials to not go based off their beliefs but more so whatever is necessary to keep them in their position.