[NEWS] Supreme Court Allows Corporations To Support Campaigns

Well, the US supreme court has been fortuitously filled up with right-wingers over the years. Sometimes it behaves like an arm of the Republican party. But other courts, in general, respond to higher courts; usually, if a court of appeals finds a serious mistrial (E.g., a judge simply failed to apply a law because of his personal opinion) the judge in question would be punished, and the case re-tried.

"Activist judges" is a Republican codeword for "decisions I don't like."

—R.J.

"Also, activist judges? What's that? Aren't judges accountable to other judges about what they do, and don't they get sanctions for dealing blatantly injust judgements, kind of like soccer arbiters, I mean refrees? "

Judicial activism has been a growing problem in the last 20 years. (It was a valid argument against Justice Sotomayor last summer) Simply put, judicial activism is where the judge basically writes or interprets the law as he/she sees fit to his/her opinion on the matter as opposed to the law itself or the US Constitution.

It's a big reason why there is always controversy over a court ruling granting gay marriage and such. The court overturns what was made by constitutional and even popular methods.

On some things such as racial discrimination, the court may ultimately be right, but on abstract rights such as gay marriage they may very well be wrong. A right can only be considered a right when it can be applied equally to all facets of a society. Things such as marriage have their backgrounds in cultural settings and as such cannot be inherently applied equally across everyone. This is especially true when it comes to churches since you could not force them to grant a gay marriage without violating their freedom of expression. That particular issue is damned if you do damned if you don't.

However judicial activism has been observed by local, state and even federal judges. Judge Cashman in Vermont for example let off a convicted child rapist after only 60 days punishment when there were mandatory minimums. He simply did not believe in real punishment and as such gave the decision based on that instead of the law as he was supposed to. O'Reilly had a field day on the matter and ultimately he was run out of being a judge.

The US 9th Circuit out of the West Coast has had numerous accusations of judicial activism in recent years.

What about court cases on interracial marriage?

What does "interracial marriage" mean anyway?

Uh, Major Tom, do you get all your news from Fox? No law or judicial decision allowing gay marriage in the US has ever been interpreted to mean that religious organisations are forced to officiate gay marriages, just like you can't force a Catholic priest to marry people who aren't Catholics.

What does "interracial marriage" mean anyway?

Marriages between people of different races, for example an asian man and a black woman (off the top of my head). Also called miscegenation, it was illegal in the US for quite a while. Strom Thurmond. :/

^Also, this.

edited 27th Jan '10 10:30:16 AM by Tzetze

^ What, so you could marry a Nazi refugee but you couldn't marry a fellow countryman who fought at Omaha beach and happened to be black?

What, so you could marry a Nazi refugee but you couldn't marry a fellow countryman who fought at Omaha beach and happened to be black?

Technically no, but only because the Army was segregated at the time and none of the black regiments hit Omaha Beach.

Not a very proud chapter of the United States' history, no.

edited 27th Jan '10 11:11:20 AM by Nornagest

There was never a federal law against interracial marriage that I can remember. Those were state laws; the last such one was, IIRC, struck down in the seventies.

But I hear southerners are still panicky around the idea of a black feller and a white lady making sweet love. Some governor lost some election because of an ad mentioning that. And saying such charming sarcasm as "Terrorists need their privacy too". So what, are you going to eavesdrop on everyone because of a couple of loons?

I think I saw it on some thread over here, too...

You can find throwbacks that are still panicky about just about anything you care to name, but I think you'd need to drive pretty far into the hills to find anywhere there's open and socially accepted opposition to black/white relationships these days.

I've spent most of my life on the West Coast, though, so I'm not speaking from an absolute position of authority.

edited 27th Jan '10 12:08:52 PM by Nornagest

I think there was a recent poll showing that 30% or so of the US population is still against interracial marriage in some way.

EDIT: Not quite. The latest Gallup poll, from 2007 shows that 17% 'disapprove of interracial marriage', which is still quite a lot, but shows a marked improvement over the last ten years. In 1994, 48% disapproved.

edited 27th Jan '10 12:43:37 PM by BonSequitur

I'm surprised no judge has ever ruled that the government regulating/officiating marriage at all is unconstitutional. I mean, marriage is (for many people, anyway) a religious ritual, so having the government say who can and can't get married seems like a pretty big "freedom of religion" violation.

I know there was a big hubbub in Louisiana about that.

Huh? Marriage? A religious ritual? It was Hijacked by Jesus a couple of centuries ago, but it was always a civil matter. And even then, don't you remember Paint Your Wagon, when women were property that could be shared by "pardners"?

Just a couple centuries? So King Henry VIII didn't have to start his own Protestant sect just to get a divorce 400-500 years ago?

You mean St Valentine didn't have to be beaten to death with a rock in 270 AD ?

Until the XVI Ith century, marriage was an entirely civilian matter, as far as I know. It was an agreement between families, and priests had nothing to do with it. That is, with performing the marriage.

However, they did have authority over what could or could not be done with a marriage. It wasn't exactly as easy as buying stuff. Same about adultery, it was a religious, not civil crime.

Can't find neded quotes.

Raven: Are you saying you're surprised no judge has ever ordered Marriage to be renamed in law? Because I think it's a bit wild tot hink a Judge would nullify all Marriages and neuter thousands of statutes because Marriage also has a Religious aspect.....

"Nullifying all marriages" is going a bit too far. Any sane decision holding that government involvement in marriage should be limited to recognizing a civil union would almost have to grandfather all existing marriages in as civil unions from an administrative standpoint.

The amount of legal effort it would take to change the wording in existing statutes would, however, be monumental.

edited 27th Jan '10 2:35:55 PM by Nornagest

I took a look at my state's recent (last year) initiative to grant some more rights to couples in civil unions. It went on and on...

(Is this ever going to be on topic again? Maybe it should be locked, at least until something new happens...?)

Well, how on-topic is "on-topic"? The OP was about the supreme court ruling that certain laws were unconstitutional. Does the on-topic conversation have to stay on that specific ruling, or is "courts ruling things un/constitutional" in general acceptable?

I guess it's okay to drift from the topic once we're done talking about it.

I'd recommend sticking to something of similar topic though. Like court rulings.

You are aware that up until a couple of centuries ago, almost all governments were semi theocratic right? What with the "it's my God given right to rule, not listening to me will piss off the big man" excuses flying left and right? Besides which, there are a few other things that wound up going into law. I'm willing to bet funerals were classified as religious in nature but were found to be beneficial enough to mandate proper disposal of bodies to prevent diseases. It would definitely be beneficial to declare legal marriage and civil unions to be equal/equivalent.