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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
April 26, 2007 1:08 am
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