The Political Role of the US Supreme Court

The Political Role of the US Supreme Court
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The Political Role of the US Supreme Court
The US Supreme Court plays a critical role in determining the direction in which the law and the country move. This is based on its role as the apex court of the land in settling controversial legal matters. While the court has a rich jurisprudential history, it has also made some decisions that are demonstrative of the birthing pains of a free and fair court.
The early racial prerequisite cases played an important role in the deliberation of race issues and what it means to be an American (Stefancic, Delgado, & Temple University Press, 2000). In this sense, these cases were used as platforms of racial discrimination and dominance by the majority Caucasian race over other races in the USA. However, it is important also to note that how the cases were decided changed significantly over time (Haney-López, 2006). In the early cases between 1878 and 1909, there was significant emphasis on the scientific determination of racial status. In this sense, Science was used to identify and determine whether a person was white and therefore eligible to be naturalized as an American citizen. In this way, Science was used as a tool through which determination of racial status based on scientific knowledge was executed and used to determine whether one was suitable to be considered an American (Stefancic, Delgado, & Temple University Press, 2000).
However, it is also worth noting that the jurisprudence created by the early racial prerequisite cases played a central role in the determination of later cases. In the later cases, scientific evidence was used about the jurisprudence established by the court on matters on non-white individuals bei...