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| Re: Did Dr. Kellyanne Conway sleep through law school? (1417179) | |||
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Re: Did Dr. Kellyanne Conway sleep through law school? |
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Posted by MTK52983 on Thu Feb 9 23:42:22 2017, in response to Re: Did Dr. Kellyanne Conway sleep through law school?, posted by Olog-hai on Thu Feb 9 23:15:09 2017. I have a problem with any Judge, Liberal or not, legislating from the bench. If the test is acting as a super legislature and overruling the decisions of our duly elected officials, then the majority in Shelby County v. Holder was legislating from the bench because they overruled the Voting Rights Act although it was approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate by overwhelming margins and signed by the President. Agreeing or disagreeing with a decision is not the standard for if the Judge is legislating from the bench. The test should be are you looking to reach a desired result then twisting the law to meet that result. A good Judge, like Judge Gorsuch said, can point to opinions where he/she personally disagreed with the result, but nevertheless ruled that way because that is what the law compelled. Turning to the current Supreme Court, I have seen Justice Sotomayor engage in the "result first" attitude that bothers me, but I have also seen it from Justices Alito and Thomas. None of us have ouija boards to channel every drafter and find out what was going through that person's head. Even if we did, the answers would probably be so varied that the exercise would be a waste of time. Certain terms, even in the Constitution, are vague. The 8th Amendment says that cruel and unusual punishments should not be inflicted. Unfortunately, the framers did not define what is meant by the words "cruel" and "unusual." Any Judge who looks at a penalty with the belief that a particular punuishment is or is not "cruel" or "unusual" per se, that Judge is going to end up legislating from the bench. |
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