Hear hear! I hope the Court has the courage of its convictions (or rather, the courage to uphold the convictions of the Framers). On the other hand, the Left's ceaseless attacks are consequential. They may one day enable a Democratic President to disobey the Court. If I were the Justices, I would indeed be worried about that.
Complaints about how the Court doesn't obey the will of the people (similar to complaints about how its makeup is not reflective of the population) always strike me as odd, given that the Court is not meant to be a representative body. The reason that the Justices have life tenure, and are not elected by the people, and that the most representative part of government (the House of Representives) plays no role in their appointment, is that the Court isn't meant to be a representative organ. As you note here, its role should be to read and apply the text, texts which can always be alterred by our legislative representatives should we want them so to be. The continued push to have the Supreme Court resolve all our problems for us, while our actual elected representatives collect a check for complaining about it, is also an important reason why the Court's "legitimacy" is in question. The more the Court does its actual job the more people will think that it is illigitimate, because they have been led to believe that it exists to serve a function it was never intended for.
Hear hear! I hope the Court has the courage of its convictions (or rather, the courage to uphold the convictions of the Framers). On the other hand, the Left's ceaseless attacks are consequential. They may one day enable a Democratic President to disobey the Court. If I were the Justices, I would indeed be worried about that.
Complaints about how the Court doesn't obey the will of the people (similar to complaints about how its makeup is not reflective of the population) always strike me as odd, given that the Court is not meant to be a representative body. The reason that the Justices have life tenure, and are not elected by the people, and that the most representative part of government (the House of Representives) plays no role in their appointment, is that the Court isn't meant to be a representative organ. As you note here, its role should be to read and apply the text, texts which can always be alterred by our legislative representatives should we want them so to be. The continued push to have the Supreme Court resolve all our problems for us, while our actual elected representatives collect a check for complaining about it, is also an important reason why the Court's "legitimacy" is in question. The more the Court does its actual job the more people will think that it is illigitimate, because they have been led to believe that it exists to serve a function it was never intended for.