Skip to main content

US Supreme Court: Judicial activism run amok?

The abortion-ban decision of the US Supreme Court a couple of days ago has raised a very critical issue - to what extent the justices have allowed their own religious convictions to affect and determine their decision.

As the Catholic News Service proudly reported back in October 2005:

"If confirmed, Alito would be the 11th Catholic in U.S. history to sit on the Supreme Court and would become the fifth Catholic justice on the current court, forming for the first time a majority of Catholics on the nine-member court."

So, has their been judicial activism? - as this piece in AlterNet questions:

"Last year, in defending his decision to vote for the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, Senator Bill Nelson (D-NE) said that it was based, in part, on Alito's "pledge that he would not bring a political agenda to the court."

Today, Nelson and the 18 other Democratic Senators who voted against the attempted filibuster of Alito reaped what they sowed. The new court -- the first in American history made up of a majority of conservative Catholics -- upheld the 2003 ban on so-called "partial birth" abortions, a made-up term that's become a hot-button issue for social conservatives, but is largely based on junk science and flies in the face of medical "best practices." It will go down as a text-book case of right-wing judicial activism, with the justices essentially overruling the medical community.

In upholding the ban, the Supreme Court overturned a critical legal principle that's guided courts for almost two decades: that any restriction on abortion must have an exception for the life and health of the pregnant woman."

Comments

Anonymous said…
cut me a break.....
when the minority use their judicial activism to deny the reality of a poor decision like roe v wade, it is called: jurisprudence.....
and now that logical minds consider the reality, they are using their "faith" to dictate law.....

please

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-de...

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?