Judicial Activism
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Judicial activism is necessary because some issues are just too difficult for the political branches of the government to confront. Advocates of the opposing theory of "judicial restraint" hold that the judiciary should mind precedent carefully, consider the Framers' intentions with regard to the Constitution, and defer to legislative decisions allowing "broad issues of the public good [to] be decided in nearly all cases by the majority through legislation enacted by elected officials" (Patterson 424). But one clearly understood fear of the Framers was the potential "tyranny of the majority -- the people acting as an irrational mob that tramples on the rights of others" (Patterson 45). This fear was one of the reasons they established the system of governmental checks and balances and judicial review that allowed the courts to invalidate actions taken by the political branches of the government. Judicial activists reject excessive deference to precedent and to the judgments of legislatures and hold that the judiciary "must look at the Constitution at a high level of abstraction, teasing out the fullest implications of principles like 'equal protection' and 'due process' and of the federal powers described in seemingly narrow provisions like the commerce clause" (Rosen 59). With the Constitution as their guide activist judges recognize that new cases present new circumstances that the Framers could not imagine but that the principles remain firm. They argue that "democr
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nother important principle implicit in the Framers' writings and actions was that no branch of the government is infallible and this must be seen to apply to the majority of voters, whose will is expressed through their elected representatives, as much as it applies to the un-kingly presidency and the nonpartisan judiciary. Thus the will of the majority in various states was that schools be segregated by race and the rules of these localities codified this expressed wish of the majority which resulted in a status quo in which white and black children were educated separately and, according to advocates of the system, equally. Strict adherence to the will of the majority and to the right of states to decide their own course of action would have meant that the Supreme Court could only decide in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that the majority's wishes must be respected. The decision to order desegregation, however, was based on no explicit Constitutional basis but on the finding that "government-supported racial discrimination violates the principle of equal justice under the law" (Patterson 425). Although this was widely perceived as a case in which the Constitutional principle could not be denied it should also be understo
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1284
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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