SF author John Scalzi is doing “reader request week” over at his popular blog Whatever, an annual event where he posts in response to reader requests (duh!).
Today’s post is on the question of “activist” judges, and Scalzi’s response is great. I’ve noticed that my political opinions and Scalzi’s have some overlap but they certainly aren’t congruent; this piece is right on the money though, as far as I’m concerned. He deals with both the designed purpose of an independent judiciary, and how rhetorical devices like the phrase “activist judges” are used to frame debate and manipulate the masses.
Here’s a snippet from early on in the piece that plays into my “people are dumb” complex (but do go read the whole thing):
Most people don’t know or understand the role of the judiciary, nor understand (at the federal level at least) that it is explicitly designed so as to be insulated from the day-to-day electoral and political pressures the other two branches of government face. Complaining that “activist judges” are not responsive to the “will of the people,” particularly when that “will” is expressed by the political “want” list of the executive or legislative branches (even if both branches are currently polling below 40% approval) is in many ways complaining that the judges are doing their job as defined by the Constitution.
Scalzi is the author of post-Heinlen novel Old Man’s War, its recent sequel The Ghost Brigades, and also of the web-published novel Agent To The Stars (which recent had a limited edition printing in dead tree form from Subterranean–I have copy #1 of that printing, by the way.)
