Supreme Court - original intent versus judicial activism and the influence of moral views in rulings

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court remains one of the most controversial branches of government mainly because the judges on the Supreme Court are not elected directly by the people and their terms are lifetime appointments . Hence , if certain members of the Supreme Court make decisions that are repeatedly unpopular with large segments of the population , well , that is just the way it goes . Since half the bulk of the population of the United States is generally centrist , there is a certain uneasiness with reactionary and radical decisions . However since the judiciary

's appointments are for life , they generally are not very concerned with public opinion

Technically , there should not be much difference between the decisions of the judges since they are supposed to follow the constitution in making their decisions . However , the outlook by conservatives towards the constitution is that of original intent while the liberal out look is that of the changing , living constitution . Then , there is the outlook of leftist radicals and right wing reactionaries which would be one of judicial activism

Let 's examine judicial activism first . Judicial activism is essentially decisions that are not based on the constitution , but rather based on party policy and personal decision . The decisions based on judicial activism are general met with extreme displeasure by the public mainly because these decisions are not based at all on the law and are often at odds with the general sentiment of the public . A common example of this would be opinions written by Ruth B . Ginsberg that reference laws outside the United States are ridiculous examples of judicial activism As Clarence Thomas once said , by this logic one could look at the laws of communist China and legalize state sponsored executions without trials if one was going to pick and choose laws outside the jurisdiction of the United States . While there is much adieu made about judicial activism decisions based on policy decisions are usually rare and not as common as many would lead people to believe

In terms of a living , breathing constitution (the liberal concept ) this belief assumes that because culture and society is constantly evolving and changing there needs to be an avoidance of taking the constitution literally since it can not cover things that did not exist when it first written . In the landmark 1973 Roe vs . Wade decision that legalized abortion and established as a constitutional right based on the notion of an implied right to privacy . Clearly , this is a decision that is based on an interpretation of a constitution written in the 18th century `liberally ' applied to the legality of a medical procedure that did not exist when the constitution was written

Original intent basically refers to interpreting the constitution from a literal sense under the assumption that the document does not change over time . The logic behind this is that if the interpretation of the constitution changed over time then the document would be rendered meaningless . One decision that could be considered an example of...