[czstar]

To have a properly functioning society there should be some level of legal uniformity on major topics. Soon two people will be allowed to marry in one state and potentially face arrest should they travel to a state where that act is illegal. Will the fact that two men (or women) are married to each other be probable cause for arrest for violating sodomy laws?

The Court should be in the business of preserving or expanding rights and not in the business of diminishing them.

[kyrra]

Why should the court be in the business of expanding rights? I think you should go read and understand what the three branches of the federal government should do.

I think people have gotten used to the supreme Court that pushes a semi-majority opinion of certain topics across the country. We've seen this with abortion, same-sex marriage, and many other topics. The problem is this overrides the Democratic process.

While some people will complain that the federal government is really slow at passing laws, I see that as a good thing. And makes it so that an opinion must be popular around the entire country before it can really become law.

Do you want a supreme Court passing what are effectively new laws if that court had a majority of fundamentalist Christians on it that weren't originalist, but rather pushing their agenda? Then you would get the supreme Court saying there is no right to gay marriage. We could also get the supreme Court to rule that a baby in utero is considered a human life and aborting it would be murder.

Pushing the supreme Court to be only a body that rules on the laws that are available to it and not reading new language into then, I think will make everybody happy in the long run.

[czstar]

The statements in the U.S. Constitution collectively have quite a few logical consequences. The 5 axioms of Euclidean Geometry lead to a vast array of theorems (logical consequences). The Court’s job is to navigate the logical consequences of the statements in the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution says nothing about a Department of the Air Force. Should it be legal to have a Department of the Air Force? The Constitution mentions “War Department”. It says nothing about a Department of Defense. Should that be legal? Well, the courts would throw out any challenge to the constitutionality of the Department of the Air Force because of the logical deductions of the statements in the Constitution.

Repeat the process for all statements in the Constitution and after 200 years you get a vast collection of legal opinions and judgments.

[OrangeMonkey]

Respectfully, the court is a small group of unelected old people. If I do not like the way they think, there is mostly nothing I can do about it.

The court should not be in the business of preserving or expanding rights - it should be in the business of enforcing laws our legislatures create. I would state 'in my opinion' but this was also the prevailing opinion for most of our history (including our founding).

To change this will require constitutional changes as its just not how our country was set up.

[czstar]

The primary role of the court is to preserve rights. It’s job is to make sure laws aren’t enforced that violate established rights. It’s job is to tell governments at all levels that certain laws passed are illegal because they violate rights. Imagine a city saying that burning a Koran is illegal and a crime punishable by death. I very much hope the Court would step in and say that law is illegal. I think you don’t understand the historical role the court has played. It does more than preserve or expand rights but that is one of its primary functions.

EDIT: Let me be more precise. The purpose of the Court is to clarify rights. It’s job is to decide what exactly is meant by “equal protection”, “freedom of speech”, etc.