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Thanks for your comment, and this is a reply to others who have replied. I wouldn't go so far as to say the courts are doing a great job. But they are doing
by supernova87a 2y ago
Thanks for your comment, and this is a reply to others who have replied.
I wouldn't go so far as to say the courts are doing a great job. But they are doing their job to interpret the laws that have been written. Far more conscientiously than the political branches. Interpretations of the law are yes, sometimes interpretations that may favor one side over another, because laws are not always clear down to the very last edge case or issue that was not anticipated at their writing, and high level principles (sometimes laws have to be at this level) can be interpreted different ways. If that were not true, then you would hardly need a judiciary. That is their role.
But to say that the judicial system has been corrupted and is biased, only because in recent years has made more rulings against "my side" when the issue is not clear cut, is to undermine one of the institutions that takes its job relatively seriously. If we adopt this perspective, why are Republican/MAGA opinions that the judicial system is corrupt because they got ruled against so many times, not equally legitimate? Who is to decide that your saying the system is biased is more worthy than theirs?
How can we sustain a system where if the rulings go my way, then the system = trustworthy? A key distinguishing aspect of an advanced democratic society (cf. January 2022) is the acceptance of rulings and elections that don't go your way. And that courts rule based on law.
Many of the things that laws were originally written for are not covering the situations that are arising now. If you want to make the outcome different, go and change the laws and make it clear what the rules should be. Update them for technology developments, for changes in societal expectations. There is a mechanism for that. And the judiciary will have to adhere to the laws and Constitution to rule on them.
Courts are not equipped to be legislative bodies, and if you put that expectation on them, you are changing their scope and role. And not for the better. Judges will get elected for their favoring of one side over another, or to be writing laws while ruling on cases. That's not something I want our democracy or separation of powers system to start doing.
And if Congress is broken, that reflects the troubling divisions we have in society -- no court will be able to fix that (without actually corrupting what the courts are for).
- DangitBobby 2y agoYou can look at opinions on recent rulings by their peers and determine they use motivated reasoning in their ruling to achieve the desired political outcome.
- supernova87a 2y agoI'm not condoning some of that in recent rulings. But also ask yourself, is this the first time you noticed it, and that wasn't happening for rulings over the past 20 years for cases where you happened to agree with the outcome? Only sudden interest in applying that principle now, I guess?