{"id":6492,"date":"2025-08-10T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-e051-introduction-to-american-government-5-week-summer-2025\/?p=6492"},"modified":"2025-08-08T12:23:25","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T12:23:25","slug":"discussion-board-11-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-e051-introduction-to-american-government-5-week-summer-2025\/2025\/08\/10\/discussion-board-11-1-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Discussion Board 11.1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol start=\"1\" class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think the court system is better at protecting individuals because judges aren\u2019t elected by the public. They\u2019re chosen by the president and approved by the Senate, they don\u2019t have to worry about pleasing voters to keep their job. On the other hand, elected officials like the president, Congress, or mayors, might make decisions based on what\u2019s popular or what will get them re-elected, even if it doesn\u2019t help everyone equally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">2.Think about how federal judges get to become judges \u2013 unlike Presidents, Mayors and members of Congress (and other legislatures), they are not elected, but rather\u00a0<em>appointed<\/em>. Many Americans have thus called the federal courts system, and especially the Supreme Court,\u00a0anti-democratic\u00a0places in our government.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>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 \u201cFederalist #10\u201d, and which social class plays a leading role in our government system.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, I do think the Supreme Court is kind of anti-democratic. People don\u2019t vote for the justices directly. They\u2019re picked by the president and approved by the Senate. And while we vote for the president and senators, sometimes people regret their vote, but they still must wait until the next election to make a change. Meanwhile, those leaders keep making important decisions, like choosing judges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think the reason judges are chosen this way goes back to ideas in Federalist #10. The people who wrote that, like James Madison, were part of the wealthy and powerful class. They didn\u2019t trust the public to make all decisions, so they wanted a system that would protect their own interests, like keeping control over the courts. By appointing judges instead of electing them, they made sure the legal system stayed in their hands and not the population.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think the court system is better at protecting individuals because judges aren\u2019t elected by the public. They\u2019re chosen by the president and approved by the Senate, they don\u2019t have to worry about pleasing voters to keep their job. On the other hand, elected officials like the president, Congress, or mayors, might make decisions based&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10731,"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-6492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion-board-11-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-e051-introduction-to-american-government-5-week-summer-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-e051-introduction-to-american-government-5-week-summer-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-e051-introduction-to-american-government-5-week-summer-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-e051-introduction-to-american-government-5-week-summer-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10731"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-e051-introduction-to-american-government-5-week-summer-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-e051-introduction-to-american-government-5-week-summer-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6493,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-e051-introduction-to-american-government-5-week-summer-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6492\/revisions\/6493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-e051-introduction-to-american-government-5-week-summer-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-e051-introduction-to-american-government-5-week-summer-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-e051-introduction-to-american-government-5-week-summer-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}