We let slavery go on way tooooo long.
I agree. What does that have to do with the issue at hand? Are you suggesting that a supreme court decision would have ended slavery? Not likely. It would either have driven the slaves states away earlier (and if we waged war to stop them they may have won, by the mid 1800s the free states where more powerful, but that wasn't clearly the case earlier in our history), or it would have caused them to simply ignore/nullify the decision.
And it would have been throwing out the rule of law, even if it was done in the name of (and was actually intended to serve, and if effective would have served) human decency.
Women couldn't vote until 1919, how nuts is that and ask yourself where were the courts!?
Following the rule of law. Ask yourself where where the federal and state legislatures that could have amended the constitution and/or statue law much earlier.
Your ideas about the court seem to be well motivated, but their impractical (thinking a court decision would have ended slavery), and contrary to the rule of law (which isn't some high sounded but empty rhetoric, if the government, which includes the courts, won't respect its own law, we are in trouble).
Also you seem to assume the courts will side with you when the legislature and executive and voters won't. But the legislature and executive choose the members of the senior federal courts (and in some cases state courts as well, in others they are voted in), so they might not depart from the other bodies on any particular controversial issue. And if they do depart, there is no reason to assume it won't be in the other direction.
You say you want basic human decency, but in addition to any possible disagreement we might have about what decency entails, there isn't any strong reason to think that activist judges would be more decent than congress, state legislatures, the president, governors, voters, or less activist judges. |
