Judicial Activism Can Kiss My Butt - Comments

First and foremost, you need to understand that legal definitions are not the same thing as every day definition. When someone in the legal community, especially a judge, is showing judicial activism, they are not following stare decisis and are therefore going against case precedent. What that means is that a lower court or previous members of a court decided on something one way and the new court is saying that's unconstitutional.

No branch of the government is higher than the rest. That's a fact. The judicial side of it is not excluded. The lower levels own up to the higher levels and the highest level answers to future judges, but always within the realms of the constitution. This is not a power play by any political side. There are people within the supreme court that are from vastly different parties. There are nine individuals on there with long careers and personal opinions of how to interpret the constitution, but that doesn't mean that it's politically motivated. There have been cases where I'm sure every single one of the judges wanted to be able to uphold a decision but couldn't because it wasn't constitutionally sound.

The Terri Schiavo case wasn't a case of activism by any definition whatsoever and throwing in an arbitrary mention of assisted suicide was just pointless and had no merit to your argument. Terri Schivao was in a persistent vegetative state and her HUSBAND made the call. Everything I've seen within the law across the board states that the next of kin is the one that makes the decision about life support if there is no living will. That is a legal document, not her just randomly telling her parents that she wants to be kept alive. The husband did not commit a crime against any of the laws. That was what was being decided. You want to stop someone from doing something? Make a law, because otherwise you can't punish someone for it or stop them from doing it. If you consider a supreme court actually following the law and the constitution of the land to be undo 'activism' then I sincerely can not help you.

Conservatives are almost never the ones arguing for activism. Liberals are, so there's another thing you just got wrong. Also, if you look back at the amount of cases that one, the supreme court has seen in comparison to the amount of cases that are out there, the amount is very small to begin with.

Also, the supreme court is a necessary function and their decisions are almost always within the means of the constitution. They prevent arbitrary and capricious penalties from being put on people, although I don't always agree with their decisions. I've never seen a supreme court decision though that was solely based on opinion and emotion.

This is quite well-written, though there are a few minor organizational flaws, specifically the word "they" becoming confused. The only real issue I have with this is your self-insertion in the beginning and ending, as well as the title, makes the article seem unprofessional. I don't know if that was the point of your assignment, but if this were a real article for something like a news column or magazine, it would seem a little sloppy. Even for an editorial. Again, I'm not sure what the guidelines for your assignment were.

But standing alone as an article, if you took out all first-person references, it would be a very strong, convincing piece. Good job!

nice job Natalie

Here's the issue with that Schiavo case: The DE Supreme Court ruling was appealed and sent to the USSC. Then the ME Supreme Court got in on the action...how, exactly?

Bottom line, the USSC ruling is final unless another USSC case overturns that ruling.

Where does the Constitution say anything related to physician-assisted suicide? I'm honestly asking here.

On a more stylistic note, please consider breaking up paragraphs. That wall of text about the conservatives - then to the liberals - then back to conservatives - then "they" was very, very hard to follow. If you group conservatives in one paragraph and liberals in another, it's much easier to follow your argument.

That's the definition of judicial activism, and the series of questions I was asked to answer for this class history paper. It does make sense, and although I'm aware that you can appeal, that was not at all the point of the assignment.

The idea that judges frequently make decisions based on personal prejudices or preferences does not make any sense and I'm afraid it never will. If you feel like a judge's ruling is unfair you can -SHOCKHORROR- appeal it and get another judge to rule on the issue.