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The Supreme Court cannot alter the Constitution. The Court's
function is to interpret the Constitution, not to alter or modify it.
The Supreme Court meets on the second Monday in October for a
session which generally extends through to July.
The Supreme Court is made up of lawyers who had long and
successful experience before they were appointed to the Court. Not all
were justices or lawyers in private practice. A Supreme Court Justice may
have been a senator, an Attorney General, a teacher in a law school, or
even the administrator of an agency that acts like a court. The typical
justice was probably appointed at about the age of fifty, and will live from
twenty to forty years on the court. He is therefore likely to be somewhat
elderly, and also to have lived in close contact with the political world of
the previous generation.
Besides the U.S. Supreme Court there are various other Federal
courts, including the district courts and (circuit) courts of appeals.
The Federal courts and the regulating agencies that act somewhat
like courts, apply the law to particular cases; but they do some more than
that. For the words of the written law cannot be all the law. New cases
arise, and the law must deal with them. Sometimes Congress passes new
laws to deal with new cases.
The Courts of Appeal were organized to relieve the Supreme Court
of pressure resulting from the accumulation of appellate cases. In general
these courts have final jurisdiction over the great mass of litigation not
involving constitutional questions. For example, parties from different
states have their case heard in a high Federal Court without going to the
Supreme Court.
A United States Court of Appeals generally comprises three judges.
(The Chief Justice and associate justices of the Supreme Court are
authorized to assign additional circuit court judges to such courts as may
need them.)
A Court of Appeals accepts the facts sent up to it by the lower
courts, and therefore does not need a jury. Its work is to decide on
disputed questions of law. As a rule a Court of Appeals sits with three
judges together on the bench. This court's principal duty is to protect the
Supreme Court from routine cases of no political importance. Its decisions
may be so clear and well grounded that the Supreme Court will refuse to
go into the question further, in which case the Court of Appeals has stated

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