Courts stepping in to decide political instead if legal issues goes back to the founding of SCOTUS, hell they recently elected a president by judicial fiat. The sheer stupidity of griping about activist judges shows an ignorance of legal history. Its only when the decision that comes down against you is it when they are suddenly activists.
Which goes to show that most people are totally ignorant of the actual definition of judicial activism is. It's people, not unlike many here, who sling it around with no clue as to it's meaning. And never mind that Scalia and Thomas are more activist judges than any one else
It stuns me how people here and in the real world can so mindlessly latch onto a term and sling it around with no understanding of it at all.
This is about the concept of a court system trying to pretend that it is above interpreting the law and finding new precedent which is what its there for.
Actually it's Scalia, who has always been something of a quack.
For every Dred Scott there's a Roe v. Wade, A Brown v. Board of Education. I'll take my chances with them over the slack jawed idiots we tend to elect that pander to the least educated and most vocal of the electorate.
Actually, I'd trust groups aimed at genuine social reform before I'd trust either of them, Both the courts and the legistlature are largely reflexive bodies and always have been; and if you look the cases were as often settled on public opinion as not. In that Scalia's right, social movements settle issues more often, and more effectively, than court rulings.
*Shrugs* Its funny and ironic at teh same time.
I do find it ironic that a Supreme Court
I put it right up there with using the term fundie. Everyone immediately knows what we're talking about with that one label.
Actually, I'd be suprised if more than two or three people here actually did know what the hell an activist judge is.
