Explanation:
Article III of the Constitution establishes and empowers the judicial branch of the national government. The very first sentence of Article III says: “The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” So the Constitution itself says that we will have a Supreme Court, and that this Court is separate from both the legislature (Congress) and the executive (the President). It is up to Congress to decide what other federal courts we will have. But one of the first things Congress did in 1789, the year the new government got going, was to set up a federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court—with six Justices. Today, we have a three-level federal court system—trial courts, courts of appeals, and the Supreme Court—with about 800 federal judges. All those judges, and the Justices of the Supreme Court, are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
Why did the Framers guarantee that we would have a Supreme Court (unless the Constitution was amended—a very difficult thing to do) but leave open the possibility that there would be no other federal courts, depending on what the politicians in Congress decided? The answer tells us something about the debates at the time the Constitution was written. To some people in the United States at that time, the federal government seemed almost like a foreign government. Those people’s main loyalty was to their states; the federal government was far away, and they did not feel that they had much of a say in who ran it. If you thought that way, an extensive system of federal courts, staffed by judges who were appointed by the President and who might not have a lot of connections to the state and its government, amounted to allowing the “foreign,” federal government to get its tentacles into every corner of the nation. Other Framers, though, thought that the federal government could not be effective unless it had courts to help enforce its laws. If everything were left up to state courts, states that were hostile to the new federal government might thwart it at every turn.
The compromise was that, just as the Constitution and federal laws would be the “supreme Law of the Land,” there would definitely be a Supreme Court—so a court created by the federal government, with judges appointed by the President, would get the last word, in case state courts did something that was too threatening to the new nation. But the extent and shape of the rest of the federal court system—the degree to which the federal government would be present around the nation—would get hashed out in day-to-day politics. The result is the large and powerful federal judiciary we have today. Â
sorry its alot to read! but i hope this helps you!! :3
