Activist judgesFollow

Does anyone else find this term as funny as I do?

It is only seemingly applied in cases where the municipal/state/federal judges disagree with the stances conservatives take on issues. The most recent incarnation is a story I just read about a ruling in Florida on their gay adoption law.



Now what the fuck does that even mean? A judges job is to make rulings based on the cases brought before it based on their legality. This law seems not only mean spirited, but also not in a child's best interests. I'm not gay, and I've certainly never tried to adopt, but it seems to me that any parent is better than a foster home (excluding physically/psychologically abusive homes).

I've never seen the term "judicial activist" used outside of conservative circles. Is this a fairly recent thing in the last 10-20 years?

Edited, Nov 25th 2008 9:27pm by Paskil

Yeah, the irony isn't lost on most of us that judges--who by definition are supposed to assess laws in light of their interpretation of the Constitution and rule accordingly--get accused of promoting an agenda whenever that interpretation doesn't sit well with the religious right.

It's a buzz phrase to make it sound as though the judges aren't doing their job properly. Nothing more.

Somewhat true.

Under the pre-1789 English Common Law (which is where American law mostly came from), judges actually made new law with no written law to back them up. If someone walked into court accusing their neighbor of doing something wrong, a judge could decide their behavior was illegal even without a written law making it illegal and even without previous decisions from higher judges making it illegal. Similar thing in civil cases.

When a judge declares a law unconstitutional, they are interpreting the law and the constitution to decide if the law conflicts with the constitution. Declaring a law "unconstituional" without anything in the constitution to back you up would be, in effect, a judge adding to the Constitution something that isn't there. This doesn't really happen (judges always point to some language in the Constitution to justify declaring a law unconstitutional).

For example, the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly refer to a right to privacy. But lots of cases are decided based on an implied right to privacy and many times today you will find such decisions labeled as activist.

When someone calls a judge activist, what they are doing, as Joph said above, is acusing the person of not doinitrite. This doesn't happen to conservative judges very often because they almost always stick to the written word. When conservative judges deviate from the words, liberals don't usually call them activists (they do call them hypocrits) because from the liberal standpoint the word is meaningless.

From the very earliest U.S. Supreme Court cases, decisions were made based on what the words implied, not just what they really say. If the argument were truly objective, it would be about where to draw that line. Instead, it's just name-calling.

You're really going to use that as a counterpoint? Allow me to let you change your statement on this; even you should be able to see the foolishness in arguing this.



The SSC being part of the government is well within their boundaries to make a change on this issue. It's the same thing that will happen with Prop 8 in California--whether you like it or not. So long as a majority decides to discriminate based on gender, creed, disabled status, criminal record etc, it's someones job to overturn, or protect that minority's rights.



Precedent was set years ago saying that discrimination and equal status are set under the constitution. You can put forth that things like adoption are not a right, but denying someone the opportunity to have a particular freedom and choice in their life amounts to taking away a core right of our country's founding principles. If you want to argue the legality of these issues, you're going to need a time machine. Don't worry though, as soon as gays have equal rights, there will always be someone else to discriminate and alienate.

Edited, Nov 28th 2008 9:40pm by Paskil

Bring back Judge Judy