An examination of the Rehnquist Court and its Justices
            
            
            
             By convention there are nine members of the Supreme Court, eight associate
            
             Justices and one Chief Justice, the current one being the conservative Judge Rehnquist.
            
             This number is not written in the Constitution, but it has become the convention. The
            
             other eight associates Justices are Associate Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia,
            
             Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Hackett Souter,
            
             Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens. This essay will examine the basic construction of
            
             the Supreme Court, an in-depth view into the current Rehnquist Court and the
            
             biographical background of each Justice within this Court.
            
            
             Article 3, Section 1 of the Constitution, brought the Supreme Court into being,
            
             "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". The
            
             Supreme Court was originally set up as part of the separation of powers in the American
            
             political system, with its independent executive, judiciary and legislature. It was not
            
             originally implicitly granted the power of judicial review by the founding fathers, but it
            
             could be argued that this power was implied. The Supreme Court actually gained the
            
             power of judicial review in 1803 in the case of Marbury v Madison, in which the
            
             Supreme Court of the time, led by Chief Justice John Marshall (who is credited in being
            
             the major figure in obtaining this power for the Court), declared Section 13 of the 1789
            
            
             Judiciary Act unconstitutional, an act that Congress did not attempt to overrule.
            
             Judicial Review gave the Court the power to interpret the Constitution, and overrule any
            
             law or action by either the legislature or the executive that was not consistent with the
            
             Constitution. To become a m...