Are Courts too involved?

When reading through Chapter 14, the question of whether or not “The Courts” have become too involved in national policymaking arises. When this happens, it is known as judicial activism, and is defined by actions made “by the courts that purportedly go beyond the role of the judiciary as interpreter of the law and adjudicator of disputes.” (Greenberg & Page, 448). There are many ways that the court’s express this judicial activism. It is a common criticism of the courts decide on too many matters that are best left for the elected branches of government. In recent years, the most memorable example of the courts deciding of “political” decisions was the case of Bush vs. Gore. Even in year well after Bush’s presidency was over, it is still debated whether or not Bush should have actually won. In an article written by Wade Payson-Denney of CNN, the results of different reviews of the voting are presented and showed different outcomes. Initially, “a group of newspapers including the USA Today, Miami Herald, and Knight Ridder newspapers conducted the first major review of the Florida ballots.” In order to do this, they had 60,000 under votes, which are ballots that did not register for the race, examined. This reviews results showed that Bush most-likely would have won the statewide recount of undervotes regardless. But, a larger review done about a month later with the same outlets as well as “five Florida newspapers released its review of more than 171,000 disputed ballots. In addition to the undervotes, this study reviewed more than 111,000 overvotes — ballots that included multiple votes for president and were thus not counted.” Although the results of the undervotes are indecisive, Gore’s overvote count more than doubled that of Bush. Then The Florida Ballots Project conducted an extensive recount with help of “CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Tribune Company, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The St. Petersburg Times, and The Palm Beach Post” and they “paid for the National Opinion Research Center, or NORC, at the University of Chicago to review 175,010 disputed Florida ballots — 61,190 undervotes and 113,820 overvotes.”  According to the results they extracted, Gore would have won a hand recount of both the overvotes and undervotes statewide. Instead, like the Florida Supreme Court ordered, Bush would have more then likely won the recount of undervotes. People argue that the Bush vs. Gore case in fact saved the nation from a constitutional crisis. But, it must be understood that this is a form of judicial activism, and as other results have shown, the court’s decision may have not yielded the most accurate results. This form of judicial activism was not fair to the candidates, or the citizens who voted just to have their equal vote tainted by the courts idea of how to handle problems reserved for other government branches.

 

Greenberg, Edward S., and Benjamin I. Page. The Struggle for Democracy. Pearson, 2018.

Payson-Denney, Wade. “Who Really Won Bush-Gore Election? – CNNPolitics.” CNN, Cable News Network, 31 Oct. 2015, www.cnn.com/2015/10/31/politics/bush-gore-2000-election-results-studies/index.html.