The Supreme Court has been in the news a great deal lately, and it is perhaps the least understood of all three branches of our government.

Most Americans can wrap their heads around the role of the Legislative Branch, which is to make the laws.

And the role of the Executive Branch seems pretty straightforward...

But the role of the Judicial Branch in interpreting the Constitution and laws seems a little mysterious.

Without understanding the Constitution or the intellectual tools justices used to interpret it, it's easy to assume that the Supreme Court justices are just your run of the mill politicians deciding cases based on their own personal preference or ideology.

While politics do in fact seep into the courts, it's much too simplistic to conclude that when justices make decisions, they are no different from elected lawmakers.

So first, what is judicial power?

Well, whenever there are disputes over the meaning of the words and phrases in the Constitution or laws, those disputes come before the Supreme Court in the form of a lawsuit.

The Constitution limits the Supreme Court to actual cases and controversies.

So before a court can hear a case, someone must establish that they have been harmed or injured in some way.

This is called legal standing.

The Supreme Court has mostly appellate jurisdiction, meaning that they don't decide what evidence can be introduced or whether a defendant is guilty or innocent.

Rather, they decide whether the law was accurately applied and, in criminal cases, whether the defendant's due process rights were protected.

When the Supreme Court hears a case, they apply the Constitution and laws to the facts of the case and decide which side in the lawsuit has the law on their side.

In 1803, in a case called Marbury versus Madison, the Supreme Court took its power one step further.

The court said that if it determines that an ordinary law violates a higher law, the US Constitution, then the ordinary law must be struck down.

The power of judicial review is indeed controversial.

Some would argue that it runs democracy amok because it involves an unelected court striking down laws that were passed by the people through their elected representatives.

Others argue that judicial review provides a necessary check on the majority in a democracy.

It is sometimes used to protect the rights of the minority in the face of majority opposition, whether exercising judicial review or simply applying an ordinary law.

The justices must first determine what the law means.

Sometimes the constitution and laws are black and white.

For example, when the Constitution says that senators serve six year terms and must be 30 years old, there's really no question what that means.

However, in many places, the US Constitution, written in 1787, is vague and ambiguous, especially when applied to disputes that arise in the 21st century.

For example, when the First Amendment says, quote, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, does no law really mean no law?

And what exactly is speech anyway?

Does it only happen when your vocal cords are moving, or when you put pen to paper?

Or can individuals proclaim a message without using words at all?

Another fascinating amendment the Supreme Court must apply to the 21st century developments is the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

This protects individuals from police invading their personal space.

You know, their person houses, papers and effects without probable cause and or a search warrant.

But when the Fourth Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1791, think about it.

The only way police could enter an individual's personal space was by physically setting foot into it.

And yet, today, the Supreme Court must apply the Fourth Amendment to cases involving facts that its authors could never have envisioned, including police using electronic surveillance drug dogs or infrared devices to get inside someone's home or vehicle without any physical intrusion at all.

How the Supreme Court answers these questions has huge implications for millions of Americans.

And in answering them, the Supreme Court isn't deciding what the government should do.

Rather, it is deciding what the government can do.

Think of it this way Supreme Court justices act as referees in our political system.

It's not their job to determine what the rules are or how to win the game.

It's their job to apply the rule, book the US Constitution to the actions of the players, and then make judgments about how the rules apply to events that unfold in the game of politics.

Just as in any sporting event, the rules of politics and how they are interpreted have significant implications for who wins and loses.

So you can imagine why there is so much controversy over how they are interpreted.

How do justices go about interpreting a document that was written 230 years ago to cases that arise today?

Given the enormity of striking down laws passed by elected branches of government and supported by the people, justices must decide the extent to which they will defer to the elected branches of government, to make the laws, or to take the laws into their own hands, so to speak.

There are many different approaches to interpreting the Constitution and exercising judicial power.

But for the sake of simplicity and brevity, here I'll cover just two broad camps.

The first is judicial activism.

A judge with this philosophy viewed the Constitution as a living, breathing document, one whose strength lies in its flexibility.

keeping the Constitution up to date with modern society.

This means that he or she may fashion rights out of the Constitution that aren't specifically mentioned.

If modern society is ready to protect those rights for example, using this approach, the Supreme Court throughout the 20th century created a right to privacy not mentioned in the Constitution, and then extended that right to include contraception, abortion, sodomy, gay marriage.

Of course, judicial activism has its critics.

Those with the philosophy of judicial restraint argue that justices should defer to the elected branches of government to make the laws, and only strike down laws that clearly, in blatantly violate the Constitution.

A judge with this view might consider a law unwise, unjust, or even downright stupid.

But if it does not violate a specific part of the Constitution, the courts must uphold it.

Now deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who subscribe to this approach, once joked that all federal judges should have a dumb but constitutional stamp for cases to which this notion applies.

Judges with this view would argue that invoking nebulous constitutional rights to strike down laws invites judges to decide cases based on their own personal preferences, oftentimes overriding the will of the people.

They would argue if there's something that needs to be changed in the law, that the democratic process exists for, that a judge with the view of judicial restraint would look to the history and text of the Constitution to determine its meaning... even today.

Although it's easy to assume that justices are deciding cases purely on their own political ideology, it is sometimes their judicial philosophy that is the best predictor of how they decide cases.

Although the current Supreme Court is comprised of six Republican appointed and three Democratic appointed justices, their decisions do not always fall along these lines.

In fact, according to Harvard Law Review statistics from the 20 2223 term, 37% of the court's full opinions were actually unanimous, and in the 20 2122 term, that number was about 30%.

So regardless of your view of the ideological nature of the Supreme Court or how it should interpret the Constitution, it's hard to deny the power of the Supreme Court as a force to be reckoned with in our political system.

In 1788, Alexander Hamilton attempted to allay the people's fears about this unelected branch of government whose members serve for life, saying that it would have neither the power of the purse nor the power of the sword, and would do little more than judge.

But shortly into this democratic experiment, Thomas Jefferson observed something very different about the Supreme Court, saying in 1819 that called the Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.

It seems as if Thomas Jefferson was right.