Monday, January 22, 2007

An Unhappy Anniversary

Laws are to be passed by legislatures in a republic. They take their legitimacy from the fact that these legislatures are elected by the public.
Judicial review is based on the fact that written laws include certain rules that are constitutionally instituted. For example, if there was a law against some form of speech, it would fall to judicial review to determine if the written law violated the written Constitution.
Where courts go wrong is by creating rights that are not in the written Constitution. For example, Roe v. Wade says that the right to abortion exists because of analogous rights elsewhere in the Constitution. The right to protection from having one's house searched without a warrant becomes something else. The "right to privacy" is consistent with the written Constitution, but appears nowhere in it.

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