Judicial Activism

Judicial Activism Defined

There are three general types of judicial decisions that are cited as examples of "judicial activism":

1. Liberal judges striking down laws that uphold core conservative American values;
2. Liberal judges refusing to strike down laws that subvert core conservative American values; and
3. Judges of any ideological stripe who uphold the existence of rights not clearly created by the text of the Constitution or relevant statues.

Cases of Judicial Activism

The most famous example of this is Roe v. Wade. Other examples include Loving v Virginia which stripped state control over marriage, putting it in the hands of the federal government; McCreary County v. ACLU in which judges stripped free speech and religious freedom from McCreary County ; Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in which the Supreme Court sided with terrorists over the protection of the United States of America. and Schiavo v. Schiavo, in which judges allowed the removal of a feeding tube from a handicapped woman in accordance with the wishes of her husband and against the wishes of her parents and many pro-life supporters..

In Brown v Board of Education, justices of the Supreme Court stripped the power of the states to mandate racially segregation in public schools. Some argue that Liberal judges should not have struck down the ability to segregate whites and blacks,[citation needed] because the text of the Constitution does not clearly require racial integration or the particular, and arguably onerous, desegregation plans imposed on the school districts involved by the Court.