More on Gitmo

I am going to expand a little on Vox Day's article that I mentioned here.

There are two basic definitions of judicial activism: (1) the judicial branch not complying with the wishes of the legislature/executive, or (2) the judicial branch making rulings where the result is predetermined and the goal of the argument is to justify the decision already made. The difference in the two definitions comes from whether one is simply against the Court exercising power because they believe that the more diretly elected/chosen branches should make all of the decisions, or because one is worried htat the Constitution is being read into meaninglessness, with the ultimate law of the land being nothing more than "the law will reflect my values."

There is, I suppose, a third definition, which is simply "making a decision I disagee with."

The second definition is, in my opinion, the best one and the one that is based on the best principles.

The reason why judicial activism is worrisome is because the judges amass large amounts of power to themselves which cannot be easily removed, and reduce the Constitution to "whatever we want it to say." (The other problem is that constitutional questions, which should be at the heart of every branch of the government, are quickly delegated to the judicial branch alone. An example would be during McCain-Feingold when some Congressmen said that they were not concerned with whether or not it was constitutional, the Court would deal with that.

In any case, the problem with the bellyaching over the Court's activism (if that is what it was) on the Guantanamo decision is that there is a genreal feeling that the President had amassed a similar levl of similarly illegitimate power, and so this wqs seen as more of a reaction than an action.

When people fear that the executive branch is not playing fair, whether the other branches play fair in dealing with it becomes much less important to them.

That is all.