Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Vicomte13
"No matter how bad the law is, no substantial number of Americans will organize to break it."

I would settle for judges that didn't break them, or write new ones from the bench.
18 posted on 12/04/2006 12:07:20 PM PST by Beagle8U (Charlie Rangel is teaching the "True Conservatives" a lesson......( there really is a difference))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies ]


To: Beagle8U

"I would settle for judges that didn't break them, or write new ones from the bench."

But that's utterly interpretive.
What is "Breaking the law", in a judge?
The US system doesn't give a politically satisfactory answer to that.
So what it comes down to is that when a court decides something that people don't like, they scream that the judge has broken the Constitution itself, the law, as though the Constitution is particularly clear, and can work without interpretation. The complaint starts to sound very much like: I don't like what the judge did, and therefore it's illegal.

The English Commmon Law system on which American law is founded is BASED on judges writing new law from the bench. That's what the cases are. Every case establishes the law for the facts in that case, and then the highest judges review the cases and their opinion becomes the law...unless they're overridden by the legislature or Constitutional Amendment, or by the highest court changing its mind in the future. That's the way our legal system has always worked. It's never been any other way.


19 posted on 12/04/2006 12:15:44 PM PST by Vicomte13 (Aure entuluva.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson