Comment by Ajedi32
1 year ago
I don't disagree the Federalist Society is activist. I'm saying the judges they produce aren't, because that "very specific way" is "follow the law, not your political biases" which is, by definition, the precise opposite of judicial activism. It sounds like you disagree with that definition of judicial activism, but you haven't provided a better alternative.
To preempt the answer you've given elsewhere in this thread "they rule in a way that you don’t like" isn't a good definition, and seems from my perspective like an attempt to muddy the issue in order to allow you to put activist judges on equal moral footing with those who actually follow the law. You are correct that its impossible to eliminate all bias, but responding to that reality by throwing up your hands and saying "I guess everyone's an activist then, judges should just ignore the law and rule based solely on their personal biases instead" definitely isn't helping the situation. There's a spectrum here, and The Federalist Society has as one of its explicit goals encouraging judges to move towards the non-activist side of that spectrum.
But they’re not “following the law, not a political bias.” The political bias is contemporary conservatism, which in reason years has meant making abortion illegal, allow corporations as many rights or more than citizens, allow infinite secret money in politics, remove as much regulation and federal agencies as possible, reduce civil rights particularly for gays/trans/people of color, get rid of affirmative action, extend “religious freedom” into new and every aspect of life including as a precursor to ignore any existing law, prevent any kind of mandatory public health response, etc etc.
Everything I mentioned is not only a stated goal but has already happened. They are getting the results for which they continue fund raising. Now conservative Supreme Court judges are inviting new areas, such as when Thomas said he’s hoping for a new suit to shut down gay marriage after killing roe v wade. Trump even said he appointed judges specialty that will kill Roe v Wade. How is this not activism?
I would posit that the vast majority of that is you reading court decisions through the lens of your own political biases.
Roe vs. Wade wasn't reversed because the judges thought abortion was wrong (though they may indeed think that). It was reversed because Roe vs. Wade was a ridiculously convoluted ruling by an activist court that created a constitutional right to abortion out of thin air when a plain reading of the text of the constitution makes it obvious it contains no such provision. But if you're looking at this solely through a political lens and see it as the court "making abortion illegal" (which it actually didn't even do, it just reversed the previous ruling that was preventing states from enforcing their own longstanding laws on the subject) then its understandable why you might (incorrectly) see that as activism.
In contrast, a right to "religious freedom" very obviously does exist in the constitution, in the very first sentence of the bill of rights, and racial discrimination (affirmative action) is banned by the 14th amendment. There's room for debate as to exactly how broadly those freedoms were originally intended to be applied, but its not obvious to me on its face that those cases were decided incorrectly due to "activism" either.
The rest of your accusations are so vague that it's not clear to me what they're even referring to.