Ideology in the Judicial Branch – Democratic or Detrimental?

One issue that I have never been able to understand about the Supreme Court and its role in American Government is the way it is relatively dependent on the particular judges’ ideology. The continued struggle for getting nominees confirmed, especially after the difficulties President Obama experienced while attempting to get his nominee Merrick Garland confirmed. This politicization of the Supreme Court and who serves on it seems to go directly against the ideal that the judicial branch has a role to act as neutral arbiters of the meaning of the Constitution in political and government affairs.

The idea that the judicial branch should be neutral and used as a way to independently test cases against existing law and decisions may originate from an ideology that is not at the basis of American thought, as in the Netherlands we have this system. In our system judges are required by law to be neutral and to not let their personal beliefs influence their decisions in any way, instead needing to base their judgments on previous legislation and jurisprudence. However, this may be because our Supreme Court judges are not appointed by the president himself but instead are promoted through the ranks until they reach the highest level. The president, himself a highly political figure, has an incentive to have his personal beliefs represented in the court that will potentially test his decisions to the law. In this way, there is less separation of powers between the three branches and thus more political influence over the court.

The chapter also addresses the question of how the justices reach their decisions, emphasizing the idea that ideology seems to be the best indicator of what leads them to their decisions. This would indicate that ideology does play quite a large role in the decisions the justices make and thus could be used to sway the vote, while according to the ideals stressed above the justices should be ideologically neutral. If ideology would play such a role, presidents could use this to their advantage, and they do.

The question remains whether this is a bad thing, and whether justices should not just be allowed to be partial in a democracy. I would argue that having ideological justices that are selected on their ideology is not a quality you need in your judicial branch because it should be neutral. However, the book offers the argument that a highly politicized judiciary, whose decisions become entangled in and engaged with the prevailing issues of the day and whose decisions reflect the views of the winners, in this view, is not to be lamented but celebrated as a reflection of democratic politics. In addition to this, in order to achieve more as a government, it is useful if the supreme court is compatible with the other branches of government.

So, do you think it is good there are some ideological aspects that are ingrained in the way the judicial branch works in the United States, or would you prefer it if the justices were entirely neutral and only there as a check on the government?

Declan Horrigan says:

December 6, 2017 at 9:10 pm

I think you make a lot of really good points in your post, I would like to focus on how you said “dependent on the particular judges’ ideology.” I think this, theoretically it is designed to untrue, however, in practice it certainly is true. The Constitution is theoretically independent of people’s ideologies because ideally it would be a clear and well-understood document that explicitly stated the correct outcome of every scenario every time, however this is not true. The Constitution dependent on people’s ideologies in practice because the Constitution is a document that is not cut and dray or black and white in certain areas. In many cases interpretation and inferring is required and therefore there need to be specific people who will interpret it and infer based on the information provided as to what the Constitution would have said if the specific question in mind was fully addressed, or what it actually implies or means for the certain scenario. Because of the inability of the Constitution to comprehensively include every possible scenario that might arise or include all relevant information (this is simply impossible), the Supreme Court judges are the ones who are tasked with the job of interpreting it and applying it. The level of success that they achieve is up for debate, however.

Grace Miller says:

December 8, 2017 at 4:07 pm

In response to your question above, I believe that the ideological differences between judges mainly lie between whether or not they believe the Constitution is a living document, or whether they interpret it strictly. I don’t have any issue with people appointing a justice based on these criteria, even if these criteria tend to correlate with political parties. On top of this, our SC Justices are chosen very carefully, and have to be approved by Congress as well, meaning if they get as far as being approved, I believe that means they are capable of removing extreme biases while trying cases. I definitely recognize that cases can be political, take Obergefell v Hodges for example, which legalized gay marriage. However, if you read the majority and minority decisions of the case, you can see how the justices used the Constitution and precedent to come up with those opinions, not their natural biases.