Fifty years after the apex of the Warren Court, charges that the Supreme Court is “activist” have resurfaced. Warren E. Burger, for 17 years the nation's top jurist, will retire as chief justice of the United States after the high court delivers its final ruling of the current term tomorrow.
The court ruled against the school district saying that "students do not shed their constitutional rights at the school house gates. As some laws in the U.S. tend to be ambiguous, or lacking in specific direction as applied to a particular case, the court system is also responsible for interpreting the laws, and ensuring they are applied correctly on both the state and federal levels.When the case goes before the court, the issue that is to be considered by the judge is whether or not an increase in child support is appropriate when using the mandated formula for child support calculations.
In basic terms, judicial activism occurs when a judge presiding over a case allows his personal or political views to guide his decision when rendering judgment on a case. The reality is that there will always be a tug of war between a strict constructionist view of the constitution and the dynamic body of ideas envisioned by extreme judicial activists. In basic terms, judicial activism occurs when a judge presiding over a case allows his personal or political views to guide his decision when rendering judgment on a case. It is also widespread knowledge that the majority of offenders receiving maximum penalties for possession of crack cocaine are African American. We the People: an Introduction to American Politics. They argued that the court should use its power to adapt existing laws to address problems in current society.Before August 2010, a defendant convicted of possessing 5 grams of crack cocaine, with the intent to distribute, faced a mandatory five-year prison sentence. Note that while the Warren court was liberal in its judicial activism, that court’s example should not lead to the conclusion that activism is always liberal. Under Warren's leadership, the Court actively used Judicial Review to strictly scrutinize and over-turn state and federal statutes, to apply many provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states, and to provide opportunities for those groups in society that had been excluded from the political process.
Conservatives criticized many of the justices, claiming they struck down many state and federal laws based on their own liberal political beliefs. Judicial activism, an approach to the exercise of judicial review, or a description of a particular judicial decision, in which a judge is generally considered more willing to decide constitutional issues and to invalidate legislative or executive actions. Supporters of the decision believed, on the other hand, that the court’s exercising of judicial activism was appropriate. Schlesinger was a specialist in American History, and was well known for his study of 20th century American Liberalism. Warren Court. Judicial activism is the judicial philosophy that the courts can and should go beyond the words of the constitution or a statute to consider broader societal implications of its decisions. The judicial system in the United States is a system that provides courts with the power and authority to administer justice, though that justice must be within the bounds of the law. The Roots Of Judicial Activism With the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the phrase "judicial activism" is in the air again. Moreover, they argue that the judiciary strikes down both elected and unelected official action, in some instances acts of legislative bodies reflecting the view the transient majority may have had at the moment of passage and not necessarily the view the same legislative body may have at the time the legislation is struck down.