1. The Supreme Court
AP Government

2. United States Constitution – Article III, Section 1
“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.”

3. Article I, Section 3, Clause 6
“The Senate shall have the sole power to try all Impeachments…When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside…”

4. Article II, Section 2, Clause 2
“(H)e (the President) shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court…”

5. Federalist No. 78 by Alexander Hamilton
“Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the Judiciary, from the nature of its function, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.”

6. Federalist No. 78 Continued
“The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The Judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgment.”

7. Current Supreme Court Justices
Top row (left to right): Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Bottom row (left to right): Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, and Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

8. Conservative Justices
John Roberts (Chief Justice)
Clarence Thomas
Samuel Alito
Anthony Kennedy
Liberal Justices
Sonia Sotomayor
Stephen Breyer
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Elena Kagan

9. Alexis de Tocqueville’s quote
“The peace, the prosperity, and the very existence of the Union are nestled in the hands of … federal judges. Without them the Constitution would be a dead letter.”