Quote:
Originally posted by sgtclub
Although I don't agree with the substance, I think this is the natural result of years of overly activist judges.
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Bullshit.
1. If this were so, why didn't we see such tactics occuring, for example, under the Warren Court?*
2. Judicial Activism has become such a cliched term I don't know what the fuck it means anymore, except that politicians of both stripes use it to describe court decisions they just don't
like.
Among others, Professor Edelman of GW
takes a similar view and expresses it better than I could.
Quote:
A succession of Warren Court landmark decisions made the judicial activism charge seem the property of one political camp. Signers of the Southern Manifesto condemned Brown v. Board of Education as "a clear abuse of judicial power." Conservatives all over the country decried Miranda and other expansions of the rights of criminal suspects.
Beginning with President Nixon, the rhetoric and the reality diverged. The mantra of "judicial activism" stayed consistent enough from the conservative side. What confused things was the substance. Presidents who campaigned against activist judges appointed 10 justices to the Supreme Court between 1969 and 1992, but it was "their" court that protected abortion and commercial speech, legitimated busing and affirmative action, restricted sex discrimination and aid to parochial schools, and even imposed a moratorium on capital punishment. Liberals, winning more than they expected to, kept quiet about judicial activism.
Over the past 15 years or so, the court has gotten more conservative. Liberals have found ammunition to turn the conservative mantra on its head, and the charges of judicial activism now flow in both directions. It is the liberals who point out that the current Supreme Court has struck down nearly 30 federal laws in the past decade, compared with fewer than 130 during the two centuries after the Constitution was ratified. It is liberals who now ask why the court does not defer to the political majority as expressed through legislative enactments. It is the liberals who now cry "activism" when the court strikes down laws establishing gun-free school zones, set-asides for minority contractors, state damages for discrimination based on age or disability, civil remedies for violence against women, and citizen suits under the Endangered Species Act. To many on the left, judicial activism will forever be defined by the court's decision in Bush v. Gore.
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Gattigap
* A: We didn't see such tactics during the Warren Court or other eras because the politicians in control thought it too unseemly. Today's GOP is happy to pursue this route today, to use Gingrich's famous phrase, "because we can." Now
that's a party of principle.
eftt
