Rosa Parks aided by ‘activist’ judges

Both conservatives and liberals are pointing fingers and trying to tar judges with the “activist” label. But Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King is thankful for activist judges in the past. He wrote: “It was a default by elected leaders that led an ‘activist’ Supreme Court to decide in 1956 that it was unconstitutional to require that Rosa Parks and other black passengers in Montgomery, Ala., sit at the back of buses solely because of their race. . . . Alabama argued then, as do conservatives today, that courts have no business second-guessing decisions of states and cities that are acting within their own laws. . . . But ‘activist’ high court justices, bless their souls, examining the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, found violations of the rights of black passengers that Alabama was either too blind or too unrepentant to see.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee

2 Comments

  1. R.D.Liebst
    Posted November 1, 2005 at 3:00 am | Permalink

    The irony of “activist judge” being in the eye of the beholder. Is almost laughable, if these people did not have a say in what happens in this country.

  2. Galahad
    Posted November 1, 2005 at 9:36 am | Permalink

    Exactly, RD. If the SCOTUS does what you or I want, then they’re interpreting the law “correctly.”

    If they’re doing something we don’t like, then they’re “activist.”

    The damnedest thing I ever saw was these “strict constructionists who believe in the state’s rights’ of the 10th amendment” whoring out everything they say they believe in by overturning the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling (voting rights are the epitome of STATES’ RIGHTS) so that they could install Bush in the White House in 2000.

    They basically told democracy to drop dead.

    That’s your “non activist” judges for you . . .