It does. Try running another search, on say "Alito" and it gives results. Go all the way back to the CNN.com home page and re-run the O'Connor search and it still comes up snake eyes....
It does. Try running another search, on say "Alito" and it gives results. Go all the way back to the CNN.com home page and re-run the O'Connor search and it still comes up snake eyes....
Run it as oconnor instead of o'connor and you get results. Nothing about her dictatorship speech though......
O'Connor independent judiciary = make your own laws
Of all the bullshit trotted out by the right wing these days, the idea that we have an ???activist??? judicial branch is the most ridiculous.
We could both agree that a good measure of judicial ???activism??? or attempts ???to legislate from the bench??? is the overturning laws passed by the legislative branch because they are found to be unconstitutional. Take the pre-Roberts/Alito court for example. Both Scalia and Thomas have voted to overturn such laws more times than all the other justices combined. So, if you want to talk about activist judges on the court, let???s talk about them.
O'Connor independent judiciary = make your own laws
Of all the bullshit trotted out by the right wing these days, the idea that we have an ???activist??? judicial branch is the most ridiculous.
We could both agree that a good measure of judicial ???activism??? or attempts ???to legislate from the bench??? is the overturning laws passed by the legislative branch because they are found to be unconstitutional. Take the pre-Roberts/Alito court for example. Both Scalia and Thomas have voted to overturn such laws more times than all the other justices combined. So, if you want to talk about activist judges on the court, let???s talk about them.
Are you talking about United States law or foreign law?
O'Connor independent judiciary = make your own laws
Of all the bullshit trotted out by the right wing these days, the idea that we have an ???activist??? judicial branch is the most ridiculous.
We could both agree that a good measure of judicial ???activism??? or attempts ???to legislate from the bench??? is the overturning laws passed by the legislative branch because they are found to be unconstitutional. Take the pre-Roberts/Alito court for example. Both Scalia and Thomas have voted to overturn such laws more times than all the other justices combined. So, if you want to talk about activist judges on the court, let???s talk about them.
Are you talking about United States law of foreign law?
You are using your Fred Barnes talking points to shape jokes*. Let's base things in reality for a minute. If you look at all of the decisions by the court I mentioned above, instead of some cherry-picked cases to support one view or another, you'll see who is into "legislating from the bench."
*saying "you don't get my joke?" usually equals not funny btw.
Give me ten minutes, im going to go back and look at all of the decisions from the court, and then Im going to read them all to see if they are overturning good law, or bad law, or good or bad lower court decisions, and then I'll get back to you, and you can tell me if I read them correctly ... Maybe 15 minutes.
Should I read all the circuit court opions too? Or maybe I better stay clear of those. Don't want the ninth circuit mucking up your statistics.
Give me ten minutes, im going to go back and look at all of the decisions from the court, and then Im going to read them all to see if they are overturning good law, or bad law, or good or bad lower court decisions, and then I'll get back to you, and you can tell me if I read them correctly ... Maybe 15 minutes.
Should I read all the circuit court opions too? Or maybe I better stay clear of those. Don't want the ninth circuit mucking up your statistics
There have already been many such studies published in scholarly law journals.
Maybe you could just look them up?
Here's a short summary that was published for a lay audience. You can save the tough stuff for when you get your law degree.
So Who Are the Activists? By PAUL GEWIRTZ and CHAD GOLDER
WHEN Democrats or Republicans seek to criticize judges or judicial nominees, they often resort to the same language. They say that the judge is "activist." But the word "activist" is rarely defined. Often it simply means that the judge makes decisions with which the critic disagrees.
In order to move beyond this labeling game, we've identified one reasonably objective and quantifiable measure of a judge's activism, and we've used it to assess the records of the justices on the current Supreme Court.
Here is the question we asked: How often has each justice voted to strike down a law passed by Congress?
Declaring an act of Congress unconstitutional is the boldest thing a judge can do. That's because Congress, as an elected legislative body representing the entire nation, makes decisions that can be presumed to possess a high degree of democratic legitimacy. In an 1867 decision, the Supreme Court itself described striking down Congressional legislation as an act "of great delicacy, and only to be performed where the repugnancy is clear." Until 1991, the court struck down an average of about one Congressional statute every two years. Between 1791 and 1858, only two such invalidations occurred.
Of course, calling Congressional legislation into question is not necessarily a bad thing. If a law is unconstitutional, the court has a responsibility to strike it down. But a marked pattern of invalidating Congressional laws certainly seems like one reasonable definition of judicial activism.
Since the Supreme Court assumed its current composition in 1994, by our count it has upheld or struck down 64 Congressional provisions. That legislation has concerned Social Security, church and state, and campaign finance, among many other issues. We examined the court's decisions in these cases and looked at how each justice voted, regardless of whether he or she concurred with the majority or dissented.
We found that justices vary widely in their inclination to strike down Congressional laws. Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, was the most inclined, voting to invalidate 65.63 percent of those laws; Justice Stephen Breyer, appointed by President Bill Clinton, was the least, voting to invalidate 28.13 percent. The tally for all the justices appears below.
One conclusion our data suggests is that those justices often considered more "liberal" - Justices Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens - vote least frequently to overturn Congressional statutes, while those often labeled "conservative" vote more frequently to do so. At least by this measure (others are possible, of course), the latter group is the most activist.
To say that a justice is activist under this definition is not itself negative. Because striking down Congressional legislation is sometimes justified, some activism is necessary and proper. We can decide whether a particular degree of activism is appropriate only by assessing the merits of a judge's particular decisions and the judge's underlying constitutional views, which may inspire more or fewer invalidations.
Our data no doubt reflects such differences among the justices' constitutional views. But it even more clearly illustrates the varying degrees to which justices would actually intervene in the democratic work of Congress. And in so doing, the data probably demonstrates differences in temperament regarding intervention or restraint.
These differences in the degree of intervention and in temperament tell us far more about "judicial activism" than we commonly understand from the term's use as a mere epithet. As the discussion of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's replacement begins, we hope that debates about "activist judges" will include indicators like these.
BigSpliff
3,266 Posts
Comments
your first link don't work
www.slate.com
Should be on the front page, by Jack Shaeffer.
It does. Try running another search, on say "Alito" and it gives results. Go all the way back to the CNN.com home page and re-run the O'Connor search and it still comes up snake eyes....
Run it as oconnor instead of o'connor and you get results. Nothing about her dictatorship speech though......
Speaking of overlooked stories...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060314/ts_nm/environment_greenhouse_dc
haha. I'm willing to bet that in 20 years or so it will come out that CNN had way more CIA infoplanners embedded in there than Fox.
i can turn it on and off like a light-switch.
LIGHT-SWITCH?
Of all the bullshit trotted out by the right wing these days, the idea that we have an ???activist??? judicial branch is the most ridiculous.
We could both agree that a good measure of judicial ???activism??? or attempts ???to legislate from the bench??? is the overturning laws passed by the legislative branch because they are found to be unconstitutional. Take the pre-Roberts/Alito court for example. Both Scalia and Thomas have voted to overturn such laws more times than all the other justices combined. So, if you want to talk about activist judges on the court, let???s talk about them.
Are you talking about United States law or foreign law?
You're a law student, right? Just wondering.
You are using your Fred Barnes talking points to shape jokes*. Let's base things in reality for a minute. If you look at all of the decisions by the court I mentioned above, instead of some cherry-picked cases to support one view or another, you'll see who is into "legislating from the bench."
*saying "you don't get my joke?" usually equals not funny btw.
Should I read all the circuit court opions too? Or maybe I better stay clear of those. Don't want the ninth circuit mucking up your statistics.
There have already been many such studies published in scholarly law journals.
Maybe you could just look them up?
Here's a short summary that was published for a lay audience. You can save the tough stuff for when you get your law degree.
Thomas 65.63 %
Kennedy 64.06 %
Scalia 56.25 %
Rehnquist 46.88 %
O Connor 46.77 %
Souter 42.19 %
Stevens 39.34 %
Ginsburg 39.06 %
Breyer 28.13 %
I believe these figures came from the New York Times. And the Times is always right.
most of the time.
Paul Gewirtz is a professor at Yale Law School. Chad Golder is a recent graduate from Yale Law (2005).
Did you read it or just google the title?
I don't even think that you think you are funny and that's why you suck.
Big deal. My school is ranked only 37 places behind Yale, so I'm not impressed.
You tried to dismiss the piece because it was in the NYT--which might of had some credence had it been written by Maureen Dowd.
Paul Krugman 68.9 %
Thomas Friedman 66.5 %
Maureen Dowd 52.1 %
Bob Herbert 34.7 %
David Brooks 23.7 %
Frank Rich 23.5 %
They tried to teach us about circuit courts and the whatnot but gave up quickly. Your judicial system is all complicated and stuff.