The Supreme Court of the United States : a single institution in its kind

Extraits

[...] No federal court, including the Supreme Court of the United States, can give consultative advisory, even on the request of the president or the Congress. As important as is the disagreement, the Court will be seized only if it is limited to a concrete case referring to a person or to a particular category of people, involving the kind of damage which retains the attention of justice. From time to time, external groups want to establish a legal principle bringing their assistance to a litigant in a particular case, to formulate an appeal which will hit Supreme Court. [...]

[...] The provisions of the Constitution which established the Supreme Court fix deliberately only some basic rules as regards jurisdiction. These rules do not specify the procedures by which Supreme Court fulfils its functions. In fact, they are relatively vague on its composition. Article III has not limited the number of its judges and the Congress, which has the capacity to modify the number of judges and the composition of the Supreme Court, has not made it for more than one hundred years, although the volume of requests submitted to the Court increased in a spectacular way. [...]

[...] The interpretation of the Constitution changes with them. But certain disagreements relatively very few, but generally persistent and notorious, lead finally before the Supreme Court. Insofar as the opinions of the lawyers on the fundamental constitutional questions remain practically immutable after multiple debates, those of the judges of the Supreme Court are relatively more rooted in and have comparatively more weight than those of the political leaders. Putting aside inevitable consideration of weakness, we wonder whether the Constitution itself is well waited on such a system in which a particular constitutional jurisprudence can become also uprooted. [...]

[...] A filibuster indefinitely prolongs the debate thereby preventing a final vote on the nominee. While senators may attempt to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee in an attempt to thwart confirmation, no nomination for Associate Justice has ever been filibustered. However, President Lyndon Johnson's nomination of sitting Associate Justice Abe Fortas to succeed Earl Warren as Chief Justice was successfully filibustered in 1968. It is also possible for the President to withdraw a nominee's name at any time before the actual confirmation vote occurs. [...]

[...] Once the committee reports out the nomination, the whole Senate considers it; a simple majority vote is required to confirm or to reject a nominee. Rejections are relatively uncommon; the Senate has explicitly rejected only twelve Supreme Court nominees in its history. The most recent rejection of a nominee by vote of the full Senate came in 1987, when the Senate refused to confirm Robert Bork. Not everyone nominated by the President has received a floor vote in the Senate. [...]