5-4 Decisions

The degree of polarization in the Supreme Court really scares me. I feel (without any data analysis) that there are too many five-four decisions. I also feel that many of the justices aren't deciding based on law but on their own moral judgments.  If they are deciding based on morality, then I guess 5-4 decisions make sense, but I think that's bad for the country. Those who are doing so, should also freely admit that that is how they're basing their decisions.

This reminds me of a debate between Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia in which Scalia claimed that it was better to have nine historians on the Supreme Court than nine ethicists. This, I believe, gets to the real difference between how conservatives and liberal approach the court. Liberals want to rule based on their morality while conservatives want to rule based on the law. This is probably the best way to describe "Legislating from the bench" - defying or rewriting law based on your own preferences.  Note that this does not mean striking down a law is necessarily legislating from the bench. It is only so when the law is struck down based on personal beliefs.

Today the court released a decision on the Voting Rights Act in which it struck down a portion of it. Liberals are extremely unhappy, but it seems as if their unhappy from the superficial idea that the court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act, without really looking at the details (this is a characteristic I've noticed before from the Left).

Look at these "Best Lines from Ginsburg's Dissent." None of them really talk about whether the law is constitutional or not, they just talk about whether there is or is not discrimination. The majority doesn't deny the fact that there's discrimination, they say only that concentrating on certain areas because they were more prone to discrimination 50 years ago but not necessarily today is unconstitutitional.

Corrected: Civil Rights Act should have been Voting Rights Act