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The US Federal Judicial System 101 -- Its History, Challenges and Suggested Reforms
Meeting ID:
858 0703 0817
Event Contact(s)
Susan Stark
Category
LWVD Program Briefing
Registration Info
Registration is not Required
About this event
It’s in the headlines daily: Ethical questions about some Justices. Yet another court Case filed to act as a bulwark to defend democracy from the threat of autocracy. Are we facing a Constitutional crisis between the executive and judicial branches of government?
As we are bombarded with such news, how much do we actually remember from that high school civics class about the Third Branch of the US government? Have we thought of it as that dependable institution that chugged along in the background doing its job to uphold our constitutional democracy? Well, the Dobbs decision overturning fifty years of settled law protecting the right to abortion may have suddenly opened the eyes of those of us who aren’t lawyers. What just happened? And more importantly, how did it happen?
Some Denver Leaguers were asking themselves these questions when the LWV US announced last spring that it would do a study of the Federal Court System in preparation for a new LWV national Position. We thought it telling that as a major civic organization whose mantra is “Making Democracy Work,” we had Positions on the Executive Branch and Congress, but none on the Judicial Branch.
We know that the LWVUS is providing us with excellent materials for the consensus discussions prior to taking a new national position, but might Leaguers benefit from a crash course on the federal court system to give us a context from which to make our decisions? A small group of Denver Leaguers put on our research hats to do a briefing on the federal courts. We are calling this briefing “Your Federal Court System 101.”
Our briefing will include:
- The origins as conceived of by the Founders
- Early history of the federal courts
- What the court system looks like today – The District, Circuit/Appeals and the Supreme Courts
- An overview of the evolution of today’s Supreme Court
- Problems with and proposed reforms to improve the functioning of the courts
All this in one handy dandy briefing! Our goal is to provide a civics-style educational context for Colorado Leaguers to be better able to engage in the consensus discussions addressing LWVUS’s new national Position on the federal court system. Please join us on Tuesday, March 4 at 5:30-7:00 by zoom,
Susan Stark, Director of Program LWVD
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