Judicial Activism: Same Sex Marriage And The Aftermath Of Proposition 8
JUDICIAL ACTIVISM IN MONTANA
Last month, a state court judge in Montana disregarded the “Rights of the Terminally Ill Act” and found that the Montana Constitution guarantees the right to assisted suicide. The article below continues by explaining the positions of two dying patient plaintiffs and the four doctors that joined the lawsuit to assist in the respective suicides. Though the debate of assisted suicide has become a relevant issue for many states in the past few years, this article begs the question, ‘at what point do we allow the judiciary to weigh in?’
It is difficult to make a hard and fast rule when it comes to judicial activism. Was Brown v. Board of Education judicial activism? Probably. Did it help towards the erasure of racism in our country? Again, probably. Still, it is easy for one to say this 60 years later. At the time, many disagreed. This reminds me of a quote by early 20th century historian Frederick Jackson Turner. He said, “Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time." The point is, we judge the present on the limited knowledge that we have at the time. However, we judge the past with the advantage of knowing how the whole story unfolded. We are quick to judge at times, but as history has taught us, time will tell whether such activism was a catalyst for change or a protest against society.
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