Greenie wrote:Knicks_Fan2 wrote:I am sorry but the entire purpose of Article V and the Bill of Rights of the Constitution is to protect the minority from the majority. Amending the Constitution such that the Bill of Rights is subject to majority change would be a catastrophe and antithetical to principal provisions of that document. Would you really want Equal Protection, Freedom of Speech etc. to be subject to the will of a simple majority?
Ahh, now we are getting somewhere. No. I also don't want it left up to 9 people. This is why we have what's called a balance of power. We run a check and balance system. Each branch needs to do it's job. The SC's job is not to make law. It's to uphold what has already gone through congress and passed. That's too much power in so few hands. And since we understand they are all being appointed by ideology instead of pure knowledge of the constitution we have a problem. What you will end up having is an unbalanced system leaning heavily in favor of one group of people while giving nothing to the other. It's not right leaning either way.
That's a good point, Greenie. It was never the intent of the Constitution that laws originate in the Supreme Court. That is for the Congress.
Sometimes, however, laws are put into effect that conflict with the protections of the Constitution. In that case, the Court can overturn that law. For example, Roe v. Wade established that states could not deny a woman's right to a safe abortion (within limits). That could have been accomplished by a law, but instead, overturning laws that abridged women's rights seems to have accomplished mostly the same thing. Since that time, there have been some refinements, but as we saw in Texas a few months ago, when they passed a law for women's "safety" that had the intent of denying them abortions, the Court once again overturned that law.
Some people call this "legislating from the bench" (mostly those who oppose abortion). Those who favor a woman's right to choose call this protecting women's constitutional rights. Hence, the debate.
The judges appointed all have different philosophical and political points of view. Some are more "strict constructionist," in that they try to adhere to what they think the founders of the Constitution intended. Others believe that the Constitution was never meant to be a document that forever prevented social growth and progress, and try to see how the founders might have intended their document to apply to the present day. Both sides of this argument accept that the political tensions and discourse around the appointment of judges would keep somewhat of a balance. They understood that presidential elections would allow the VOTERS to ultimately have a voice in how the President they elect would choose a new Justice of the Supreme Court. Ours is what we call a representative democracy - the voters do not vote for every law and executive order, but they elect people who are entrusted with carrying out their will. For better or worse, that is how our system works.
Most of us have a lot of gripes about our system and nobody is 100% satisfied. That's probably best, because if group A is entirely satisfied, group B would not likely benefit very much from the government. Our system stinks, yes, but most people here still say it's the best one there is (so far).
Keep educating
