HOOK: Since the beginning of our country, 158 laws have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
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Our government has three branches of government, the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. Because of the basis in which our country was founded, the political leaders of the past wanted to insure that none of these branches would retain too much control over the government. In order to do this, they created the system of checks and balances, which is the process in which different sections of the government screen each others political actions in order to protect our system of government and the rights of the citizens of the United States. In order to make sure laws are kept faithful …show more content…
In the United States, the current president nominates people to become Supreme court justices. Their can be between 5-10 Supreme Court Justices, but once one has been appointed, they are appointed for life, or until they retire or are impeached. So the president only actually chooses a supreme court justice when one needs to be replaced for these various reasons. Currently, there are nine Supreme Court Justices. There are two ways a law can come under scrutiny. One is when Congress passes a law, the Supreme Court looks over the law and decides if it violates the Constitution and the rights it gives the people. The other way is when the justices look at a law that has already been passed, but they have decided it might go against the Constitution. Either way, the Supreme Court Justices vote to decide if the law is unconstitutional, and a majority vote …show more content…
They say that the law requires racial separation in schools of the District of Columbia is a violation of due process. Another example in the same context is a law from 1938, which says that someone would no longer be presumed guilty because of a past conviction and the possession of a firearm because the original law was also a violation of due process. Finally, another law, passed in 1958, removed the exemptions on the ban from reproducing currency. This is because it was thought to violate the first amendment by putting exceptions on what the media could publish. Basically, all of these laws were repealed for the same reason, because they went against the basic principles of the Constitution. These are good examples of the government at work to make sure the peoples rights are