{"id":32,"date":"2013-06-25T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2013\/06\/25\/conservatives-have-their-own-judicial-activists"},"modified":"2013-06-25T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T16:00:00","slug":"conservatives-have-their-own-judicial-activists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=32","title":{"rendered":"Conservatives have their own judicial activists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>My friend and columnist Rick Horowitz noted this morning on Facebook that he\u2019s awaiting \u201cconservative outrage over activist judges\u201d overturning a federal law that had the full approval of Congress.<\/p>\n<p>The outrage, were it to come, would be in response to the Supreme Court\u2019s 5-4 decision overturning a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2013\/06\/25\/politics\/scotus-voting-rights\/index.html?hpt=hp_t1\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2013\/06\/25\/politics\/scotus-voting-rights\/index.html?hpt=hp_t1\">http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2013\/06\/25\/politics\/scotus-voting-rights\/index.html?hpt=hp_t1<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The anger, of course, won\u2019t come from the right side of the political aisle. Conservative judicial activism doesn\u2019t count in conservative political circles. Activist judges in that context are, um, \u201cfollowing the law.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The court said in its narrow ruling that Congress now must revise the law to ensure that it measures up to constitutional scrutiny.<\/p>\n<p>The court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which sets a government formula for determining which states and counties are subject to continued federal oversight. The country has changed and the formula is now unworkable, said Chief Justice John Roberts in his majority opinion.<\/p>\n<p>Horowitz\u2019s point, though, is an interesting one. Congress enacted the law 48 years ago after vigorous national debate. There were no hidden agendas or secret provisions. It said the law is firm and should be obeyed. Now, nearly five decades later, a new court has said the law no longer applies. The court, in effect, has written a new law from the bench.<\/p>\n<p>Isn\u2019t that the kind of activism that gets righties all riled up? Don\u2019t they bristle when liberal judges interpret the law in such broad terms? <\/p>\n<p>Where, indeed, is the outrage now?<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My friend and columnist Rick Horowitz noted this morning on Facebook that he\u2019s awaiting \u201cconservative outrage over activist judges\u201d overturning a federal law that had the full approval of Congress. The outrage, were it to come, would be in response to the Supreme Court\u2019s 5-4 decision overturning a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=32\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Conservatives have their own judicial activists<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}