Judicial Activism

From dKosopedia

Judicial Activism is a complaint of Southern Democrats before the realignment of the South in the Republican Southern Strategy, and of Republicans ever since. It is a code phrase for court decisions enforcing Constitutional protections for minorities, particularly since Brown v. Board of Education, and for the extension of existing rights to new situations, or limitations on rights, particularly property and gun rights, when they conflict with other rights of the people or appropriate concerns of government. The Brown v. Board decision of the Earl Warren Supreme Court ending legalized Jim Crow school segregation in the South under the legal fiction of Separate But Equal, established in 1896 by the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. The first major application of the Judicial Activism theory was the Impeach Earl Warren movement.

In this theory, Plessy v. Ferguson is not Judicial Activism, but Brown v. Board of Education is. Other particular targets of this charge are Supreme Court cases extending privacy rights to contraception and abortion; cases in several states legalizing gay marriage; The Miranda decision, and a variety of other civil rights and environmental cases.

Judicial activism can be considered as a negative synonym for the long existing tradition and concept of common law.