{"id":11995,"date":"2025-11-09T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T04:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/?p=11995"},"modified":"2025-11-09T12:35:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T17:35:31","slug":"discussion-11-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/2025\/11\/09\/discussion-11-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Discussion 11.1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>From what I gathered from the readings, the court system protects the individual better, mainly because judges don&#8217;t have to worry about getting voted in or out. Elected people like the president or congress tend to move based on what the majority wants, or what will make them look good politically. Judges aren&#8217;t in that cycle, so they can focus on if something is actually constitutional, not just popular. An example of this is Miranda V. Arizona. The state court convicted him easily, but the supreme court stepped in because his rights were violated during questioning. If the federal courts didn&#8217;t exist as a separate layer, his confession would&#8217;ve stayed even though it wasn&#8217;t obtained daily. That case shows how someone who isn&#8217;t powerful, popular or well connected can still get their rights protected in the court system, which elected officials do not usually prioritize.  <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u00a0I don\u2019t really see the Supreme Court being unelected as something that makes it anti-democratic. The founders set it up like that on purpose. Madison explains in Federalist No. 10 that majority factions can get out of control fast, because people usually push whatever benefits them even if it hurts smaller groups. If judges had to run for office, they\u2019d end up trying to impress the same majority Madison warned us about. That\u2019s why they get lifetime terms and so they can focus on the Constitution instead of whatever is popular in the moment. The readings also pointed out that the founders expected people from the educated or professional class to handle legal interpretation, since they believed those folks would make more stable decisions than the general public. They wanted judges to be separate from everyday politics so their decisions weren\u2019t influenced by public pressure. And we see how that works in cases like Miranda, who had no money or status but still had his rights protected once the federal courts stepped in. I don\u2019t see the Supreme Court as anti-democratic. I see it as more of a necessary checkpoint to stop the majority from overpowering people\u2019s individual rights<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":10927,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion-board-11-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11996,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11995\/revisions\/11996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2025-introduction-to-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}