Supreme Court, Essay Example

The Supreme Court of the United States is the most powerful element of the judicial branch of government. It is constitutionally designated to be the primary body for interpreting the American Constitution. As such, the court chooses which cases it will adjudicate based on the appraisal of which specific cases are of special constitutional significance. Most of the cases that are heard by the Supreme Court are cases that have already been decided by a lower court and are nor undergoing an appeal process. The Supreme Court is the final arbiter of all appeals. Each year thousands of cases are referred from the lower appeals courts to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court then decides to hear those cases for which there are very significant constitutional issues of precedents at stake. Obviously, the Supreme Court is able to adjudicate only a small percentage of cases that are referred to it from the lower courts. 

Given these facts, the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the Lawrence v. Texas case in 2003 originated out of a perceived need to clarify federal law in regard to individual state laws that were concerned with the practice of homosexuality. In this case, the court ultimately decided that the criminalization of homosexual sodomy by individual states was, in fact, a violation of the due process law contained in the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution. The court ruled specifically “that any law that criminalized the act of homosexual sodomy was in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” (Leone, 2009, 1). In other words, the Supreme Court chose to rule that federal law regarding due process had precedence over the preference of the states in regard to the practice of homosexuality. It is clear why the court would hear such a case as the issues involve relate directly to constitutional rights. However, what is less clear is whether or not the Supreme Court is reading the due process clause far too widely. The decision by the court to strike down the criminalization of homosexuality is viewed by many as an infringement on state’s rights, including religious freedoms. The supreme court in hearing the case, demonstrated that its primary mode of concern is for issues that relate directly to constitutional interpretation and which impact the nation as a whole

Reference

Carman A. Leone. 2009. “Morals Legislation Since Lawrence V. Texas: The Argument For Bonos Mores” ExpressO; accessed 3-2-14; http://works.bepress.com/carman_leone/1