Powers of the Supreme Court

Powers of the Supreme Court
Lauren Mazich

The Supreme Court is the final judge in all cases involving laws of Congress, and the highest law of all — the Constitution. The Supreme Court works in a very unique way. After a case is presented at state levels, a decision is made on whether there is a need to present it at a federal level. The decisions of the Supreme Court are made inside an all white, courthouse in Washington, D.C. Approximately 7,000 to 8,000 requests for hearings are presented each year and less than 100 are heard. If the Court decides not to hear the case, the ruling of the lower court stands.

While the Supreme Court serves as the most powerful judicial court in our system, it is not all-powerful when compared to other branches of government. The system of checks and balances ensures that no one branch of government holds all, or too much of the power. So, while the Supreme Court can tell a president that his or her actions are not allowed by the Constitution or tell Congress that a law it passed violated the U.S. Constitution and is, therefore, no longer a law, the executive and legislative branches also have power over the Supreme Court. The President nominates justices to the court while the Senate must vote its approval of the nominations.

Even though power is said to be divided evenly, The Supreme Court is the most powerful judicial body on Earth; it consists of nine justices. Part of their job is to interpret the Constitution by safe guarding liberty, preserving the union and upholding the rule of law. They draw the boundaries of government power. The Supreme Court has a responsibility to be impartial, keep the faith of the public, and to resolve national problems.

Rogers Diffusion of Innovations

Rogers Diffusion of Innovation
Lauren Mazich
Fascinating Amazon Stats

Throughout the past several years technology has become a significant part of our everyday lives. We have watched many different companies come and go, while some have succeed and some have failed. The Rogers Diffusion of Innovations tries to help us explain how and why some of these companies are catching on faster than other companies.

A strong example of this trend is Amazon. It was only a few years ago where we knew Amazon as a convenient and dependable place to order online and have it delivered within a reasonable time. Here we are in 2019 and Amazon's share of the US eCommerce market hit 49% which adds up to being 5% of all retail spent across the entire country. The idea of buying a good online was inviting in the early years, and now that this idea has caught on, Amazon continues to make this even easier for its users.

With both net sales and net income being well in the billions, Amazon continues to spread their sites and they are about to open up new Headquarters in Virginia and New York. Nowadays over 95 million people have some level of an Amazon Prime Account. This statistic is mind blowing and all 95 million of the Amazon Prime Users are content until something goes wrong with their ordering or delivery process of a good or service they purchased from Amazon. Even though this has not been too much of an issue yet, Amazon is on a online service, and online services do crash and can even catch a bug or a virus that can lead to more damaging outcomes.

Most business owners have goals to be as big and successful as Amazon has become and is now. However, sometimes being a big name company with millions of users can be more dangerous and can definitely put more pressure on the company to preform at its peak. Many things can go wrong as this company continues to grow and purchase more things along the way; However, Amazon is still creating changes to our society today that have never been seen before such as the first cashier-less stores and the hope to use drones for the use of delivering packages in the near future. Amazon has already made huge strides to taking over the world in the past few years and they continue to come up with strong ideas to capture more users along the way.

iOS 13...Lucky or not?

iOS 13... Lucky or Not? 

Updates and Features of iOS 13

This coming Summer, Apple will be releasing their newest iOS update to all Apple products bringing some potential big changes. Some of these new functions will effect how we will use our phones consistently, while some of these other changes may not be so much of a factor. While this update with yet again try to attempt to extend battery life, there are some other fun features that come along with it.

Some of these little improvements include things such as taking the volume level popup away. This might not seem like a huge change, but now when you go to adjust your volume, you can continue using your screen instead of waiting for those extra few seconds for the volume level screen to go away. Another small improvement is Siri. Siri is still a fairly new concept and still has plenty of room for improvements. With this update, Siri will now have the ability to automatically send a text message explaining why you declined a call. Depending on the type a car a person has, they have the option to see various responses to send to the caller, one in which is your current location.

This update with also include some new updates that will be beneficial. For example, you will now have the ability to snooze alarms. It happens to everyone; you forget to turn your alarm off on a day you finally get to sleep in and it wakes you up. With this new feature, you can snooze your alarm for a certain amount of time, for example a week, and then after that week is over your alarm will continue as scheduled. Lastly, another change that should benefit a lot of users is the ability to search for emojis. We all ave those emojis that we want to use but can never find; however, with this new update we will have the opportunity to search for emojis we want to use.

All in all, this new iOS update might be a bit of a change for us and will take some time to get used to. However, with several new features it is hopeful that this update will continue to bring in more users and make the use of technology even easier and more enjoyable than it was before. 

Eight Values of Free Expression

Lauren Mazich
Values of Free Expression

Each of these Eight Values of Free Expression serve a distinct purpose in the way we live our lives and they help form our society and the government to be the way it is today. Even though each of these values are important to the way we go about our lives, there was one that particularly stood out to me. The fourth value of expression, Individual Self-Fulfillment, is very important in a society like ours is today.

Individual Self-Fulfillment allows people to express themselves and create their own identity. Nowadays, there are various kinds of people throughout the world; not one person is like another. This value of Free Expression allows an individual to express who they truly are and be themselves around others freely.

Without a value of Free Expression set into place like this, people who feel "different" from society, may not feel comfortable enough to express who they truly are in a public environment. Individual Self-Fulfillment gives a person this ability to be who they are and create a unique identity for themselves, in a public or private environment. This value of expression specifically gives people the comfort to be who they are and truly express that they may be different from one another.

Even though Individual Self-Fulfillment is a very important part of today's society, there are seven other values of free expression that also play significant roles to help our country, the people in our country and businesses within our country function the way they do.