Introduction "We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is." -Charles Evans Hughes, then governor of New York and later Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court In 1831, a young Frenchman named Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States to study the American experiment in democracy, then in its infancy. Although his visit lasted only nine months, his powers of observation were so formidable that he was able to write what many consider the best book ever written about our system of government,  Democracy in America,  the first volume of which appeared in 1835. In that book he stated, "There is almost no political question in the United States that is not resolved sooner or later into a judicial question. [i] What was observably true to a visitor in the first half of the nineteenth century is unquestionably true to most Americans in the first half of the twenty-first century. If most, if not all, political questions become judicial questions, it makes sense to ask, "Who gets to decide the questions?" Or, more precisely, "Who gets the final word?" The honest answer is, "The Supreme Court of the United States." Why is that so? Why are nine unelected men and women in fact the final deciders? A Supreme Court Justice once answered that question, "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final." [ii] This comment smacks of cynicism, but it is the candid truth and cannot be ignored. The Supreme Court is not unfailing because they are always right. In fact, the quoted Justice also acknowledged that if Supreme Court decisions were subject to further review by another group of judges, they would likely be reversed on occasion. But the fact is-there is no other court! A decision by the Supreme Court interpreting the Constitution of the United States  cannot  be reversed except by an amendment to the Constitution or by a subsequent Supreme Court decision. Any Supreme Court interpretation of legislation passed by Congress cannot be undone except by changing the law or having the Supreme Court later change its mind. This is because in all such matters, the United States Supreme Court is final. . . . This book is written to explain how and in what ways the country we live in today has been shaped, molded, and fashioned by the judicial branch. It tells the stories of seven cases that made their way to the highest court in the land and what the Court, often in a 5-4 split, decided. We will begin with the case that made all the rest of the cases happen- Marbury v. Madison  (1803) - in which the Supreme Court established itself as the final word on what is or is not constitutional. We follow with the case of  Plessy v. Ferguson  (1896), the Supreme Court decision that ended the efforts in the last half of the nineteenth century to integrate African-Americans into mainstream society, sanctioned state-sponsored segregation, and explains to some extent why our nation remains racially divided so many decades later. The case of  Lochner v. New York  (1905) is considered the birth of the judicial doctrine that allows unelected judges wide discretion to decide what the government can or cannot regulate. Although that case dealt with the question of what hours a baker could work, it is the genesis of the abortion and same-sex marriage decisions of decades later. Next we will explore  Wickard v. Filburn  (1942), a case that opened the floodgates of federal regulation of commerce and business and has been used to justify the explosion of federal criminal laws and regulations. A limited interweaving of religion and government existed with little criticism until the case of  Everson v. Board of Education  (1947). In that case, the Supreme Court decision discovered the previously unknown wall between religion and government that has subsequently been used to remove religion from the public sphere. A battle cry of the American Revolution was "no taxation without representation!" Yet in  Missouri v. Jenkins  (1990), the Supreme Court authorized an unelected federal judge to raise taxes on the citizens of a school district in Missouri in order to carry out his dreams and visions for a desegregated public school district. Finally, we explore the phenomenon of "social reformation without representation" by virtue of Supreme Court decisions such as  Obergefell v. Hodges  (2015) that have upended the societal, cultural, and moral norms of American society. Among other reasons, this book has been written to help the reader understand why the entire nation finds itself breathlessly awaiting the major Supreme Court decisions often handed down at the end of its annual term in June of each year. ?It is also hoped that the reader may more fully understand why the battles over who is appointed to the Supreme Court have in some respects come to overshadow the contests for control of either the White House or the Congress. Notes [i] De Tocqueville,  Democracy,  257. [ii]  Brown v. Allen ,  344 U.S. 443 (1953), 540 (Jackson, J. concurring). Excerpted from Supreme Power: 7 Pivotal Supreme Court Decisions That Had a Major Impact on America by Ted Stewart All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.