Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth

@ xurtio

that's interesting.. but i don't think that is what the supreme court is meant to do. i know you say it's not about what they should do but what they actually do, but i interpreted that as "in a perfect world... they should do x" where as the political reality doesn't allow that.

but as far as i understand the role of the supreme court, the role they are supposed to play is in ruling on legal cases on a federal level using logic and precedents derived from the constitution and previous legal rulings.

ThisNation.com--Supreme Court Decision Making

this is why politicians and polemics often whine about "activist judges" and the like.. the supreme court was never intended to act as a tool for implementing political agendas. of course the pragmatic reality is that presidents are elected and presidents get to appoint justices, and so presidents tend to appoint justices which conform to their ideological persuasion. even this is a sort of bastardization of the role the supreme court is supposed to fulfill.

but if you're saying the supreme court is just guided by popular opinion vs actual legalese logic then i'd say that makes the supreme court even more of a joke, to me. i would ask why not just make these decisions a matter of public referendum, if the qualifying criteria for a sound supreme court decision is public support. we really don't need judges to determine what the popular opinion is, if that's all that matters.