Mark Wonsil wrote:
  >
> The role of the Supreme Court changed in a landmark case called Marbury vs.
> Madison:
> 
> http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/judicialrev.htm
> 
> The concern with judicial review is that the Court becomes more powerful
> than the legislative and executive branches and this can transform the
> country from a constitutionally-limited republic to a judicial oligarchy.

The Supreme Court is no more powerful than the Congress or the 
Presidency.  We are subject to the combined rule of three branches of a 
federal government whose roles include providing a check and balance for 
the power of each other.  The Supreme Court can be overruled by the 
combined power of the Congress and the Presidency by amending the U.S. 
Constitution.  That process is designed to be difficult and lengthly 
specifically to make its use infrequent.

> Legislators have actually been writing laws in such a way that judges can
> decide how they should be implemented.

Wow.  This must be new.  I always thought politicians spoke clearly and 
wrote laws without fluff or legaleaze that might make their meaning 
unclear.  /:|

Realistically, a good amount of the fluff that gets written into our 
laws is exactly so that the 'reason' a law is passed is incorporated 
into its text and is therefor available as fodder in the fight that some 
'activist judge' is going against the original meaning of the law; but I 
digress.

Legislators write laws to be open to situational interpretation because 
to do otherwise greatly reduces the power and effect of the law.  The 
flexibility increases the likelihood that they will not be nullified, 
but rather will be applied and made part of the legal fabric of our society.

> The process eliminates that pesky democratic thingy but causes a lot of
> political strife - in case you haven't noticed...

It's not politically expedient to admit this, Mark, but the course of 
the law is slow, and horribly intricate.  The democratic thingy, of 
which you seemingly speak so fondly, however, is often the actions of 
short lived political personalities catering to their money base, 
burning out in a blaze of passing a few bills that will have to be 
overturned following legal challenges because allowing them to exist 
would nullify tens or hundreds of other laws the court rightly deems to 
be more valuable.

Worse, the passage of those laws is usually done as a "you scratch my 
back and I'll scratch yours" with more senior (and more likely to stay 
in power) legislators who know the are unlikely to stand, but again are 
more interested in their own battles.

No man is an island, and no law stands alone in the judiciary.  Every 
law competes and interacts with other related laws for application in a 
situation; and it is really that choosing of which law will win out that 
the courts must do.  It is situational.  It is political.  It is how the 
system was designed, and while it is easy to complain about it, there is 
nothing currently available that is better.


> Mark W. 

Rs~

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