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Counter-majoritarian Difficulty
The counter-majoritarian difficulty (sometimes ''counter-majoritarian dilemma'') is a perceived problem with judicial review of legislative (or popularly-created) laws. As the term suggests, some oppose or see a problem with the judicial branch's ability to invalidate, overrule, or countermand laws that reflect the will of the majority. The counter-majoritarian difficulty is often raised in discussions of United States constitutional law, particularly to discuss the powers of the three branches of the federal government of the United States. Origins Alexander Bickel, a law professor at Yale Law School, coined the term ''counter-majoritarian difficulty'' in his 1962 book, ''The Least Dangerous Branch''. He used the term to describe the argument that judicial review is illegitimate because it allows unelected judges to overrule the lawmaking of elected representatives and thus to undermine the will of the majority. The problem stems from the understanding that a democracy's legitimacy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Judicial Review
Judicial review is a process under which executive, legislative and administrative actions are subject to review by the judiciary. A court with authority for judicial review may invalidate laws, acts and governmental actions that are incompatible with a higher authority: an executive decision may be invalidated for being unlawful or a statute may be invalidated for violating the terms of a constitution. Judicial review is one of the checks and balances in the separation of powers: the power of the judiciary to supervise the legislative and executive branches when the latter exceed their authority. The doctrine varies between jurisdictions, so the procedure and scope of judicial review may differ between and within countries. General principles Judicial review can be understood in the context of two distinct—but parallel—legal systems, civil law and common law, and also by two distinct theories of democracy regarding the manner in which government should be organized w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Article Three Of The United States Constitution
Article Three of the United States Constitution establishes the judicial branch of the U.S. federal government. Under Article Three, the judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court of the United States, as well as lower courts created by Congress. Article Three empowers the courts to handle cases or controversies arising under federal law, as well as other enumerated areas. Article Three also defines treason. Section 1 of Article Three vests the judicial power of the United States in the Supreme Court, as well as inferior courts established by Congress. Along with the Vesting Clauses of Article One and Article Two, Article Three's Vesting Clause establishes the separation of powers between the three branches of government. Section 1 authorizes the creation of inferior courts, but does not require it; the first inferior federal courts were established shortly after the ratification of the Constitution with the Judiciary Act of 1789. Section 1 also establishes that federal judge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Judicial Activism
Judicial activism is a judicial philosophy holding that the courts can and should go beyond the applicable law to consider broader societal implications of its decisions. It is sometimes used as an antonym of judicial restraint. The term usually implies that judges make rulings based on their own views rather than on precedent. The definition of judicial activism and the specific decisions that are activist are controversial political issues. The question of judicial activism is closely related to judicial interpretation, statutory interpretation, and separation of powers. Etymology Arthur Schlesinger Jr. introduced the term "judicial activism" in a January 1947 ''Fortune'' magazine article titled "The Supreme Court: 1947". The phrase has been controversial since its beginning. An article by Craig Green, "An Intellectual History of Judicial Activism," is critical of Schlesinger's use of the term; "Schlesinger's original introduction of judicial activism was doubly blurred: not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Judicial Interpretation
Judicial interpretation is the way in which the judiciary construes the law, particularly constitutional documents, legislation and frequently used vocabulary. This is an important issue in some common law jurisdictions such as the United States, Australia and Canada, because the supreme courts of those nations can overturn laws made by their legislatures via a process called judicial review. For example, the United States Supreme Court has decided such topics as the legality of slavery as in the ''Dred Scott'' decision, and desegregation as in the '' Brown v Board of Education'' decision, and abortion rights as in the ''Roe v Wade'' decision. As a result, how justices interpret the constitution, and the ways in which they approach this task has a political aspect. Terms describing types of judicial interpretation can be ambiguous; for example, the term ''judicial conservatism'' can vary in meaning depending on what is trying to be "conserved". One can look at judicial interpr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Founding Fathers Of The United States
The Founding Fathers of the United States, known simply as the Founding Fathers or Founders, were a group of late-18th-century American Revolution, American revolutionary leaders who United Colonies, united the Thirteen Colonies, oversaw the American Revolutionary War, war for independence from Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain, established the United States, and crafted a Constitution, framework of government for the new nation. Historians generally recognize prominent leaders of the American Revolution, Revolutionary Era (1765–1791), such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton, as Founding Fathers. In addition, signers of the United States Declaration of Independence, Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are widely credited with the nation's founding, while other scholars include all delegates to the Constitutional Convention (United States), Constitutional Convention in 1787 whether they signed th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Separation Of Church And State
The separation of church and state is a philosophical and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the state. Conceptually, the term refers to the creation of a secular state (with or without legally explicit church-state separation) and to disestablishment, the changing of an existing, formal relationship between the church and the state. Although the concept is older, the exact phrase "separation of church and state" is derived from "wall of separation between church and state", a term coined by Thomas Jefferson. The concept was promoted by Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke. In a society, the degree of political separation between the church and the civil state is determined by the legal structures and prevalent legal views that define the proper relationship between organized religion and the state. The arm's length principle proposes a relationship wherein the two political entities intera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Establishment Clause Of The First Amendment
In United States law, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, form the constitutional right of freedom of religion. The relevant constitutional text is: The Establishment Clause acts as a double security, prohibiting both religious abuse of government and political control of religion. Under it the federal government of the United States as well as the governments of all U.S. states and U.S. territories are prohibited from establishing or sponsoring religion. The clause was based on a number of precedents, including the Constitutions of Clarendon, the Bill of Rights 1689, and the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonial constitutions. An initial draft by John Dickinson was prepared in conjunction with his drafting the Articles of Confederation. In 1789, then-congressman James Madison prepared another draft which, following discussion and debate in the First Congress, would become part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Creationism
Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 'the belief that the universe and living organisms originated from specific acts of divine creation.'" In its broadest sense, creationism includes a continuum of religious views, Haarsma 2010, p. 168, "Some Christians, often called 'Young Earth creationists,' reject evolution in order to maintain a semi-literal interpretation of certain biblical passages. Other Christians, called 'progressive creationists,' accept the scientific evidence for some evolution over a long history of the earth, but also insist that God must have performed some miracles during that history to create new life-forms. Intelligent design, as it is promoted in North America is a form of progressive creation. Still other Christians, called theistic evolutionists' or 'ev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intelligent Design
Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for its bold attempt to rewrite the basic rules of science and its claim to have found indisputable evidence of a God-like being. Proponents, however, insisted it was 'not a religious-based idea, but instead an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins – one that challenges strictly materialistic views of evolution.' Although the intellectual roots of the design argument go back centuries, its contemporary incarnation dates from the 1980s" Article available froUniversiteit Gent/ref> Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." * * ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kitzmiller V , a town in the United States
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Kitzmiller may refer to: People * John Kitzmiller (1913–1965), African-American actor * Johnny Kitzmiller (1904–1986), American football player and member of the College Football Hall of Fame * Karen B. Kitzmiller (1947-2002), American politician * Warren Kitzmiller (1943-2022), American politician See also * ''Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District'', 2005 United States court case * Kitzmiller, Maryland Kitzmiller is a town in Garrett County, Maryland, Garrett County, Maryland, United States. The population was 321 at the 2010 census. GeographyKit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tyranny Of The Majority
The tyranny of the majority (or tyranny of the masses) is an inherent weakness to majority rule in which the majority of an electorate pursues exclusively its own objectives at the expense of those of the minority factions. This results in oppression of minority groups comparable to that of a tyrant or despot, argued John Stuart Mill in his 1859 book ''On Liberty''. The scenarios in which tyranny perception occurs are very specific, involving a sort of distortion of democracy preconditions: * Centralization excess: when the centralized power of a federation make a decision that should be ''local'', breaking with the commitment to the subsidiarity principle.Lacy K. Ford Jr., "Inventing the Concurrent Majority: Madison, Calhoun, and the Problem of Majoritarianism in American Political Thought", ''The Journal of Southern History,'' Vol. 60, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 19–5in JSTOR/ref> Typical solutions, in this condition, are concurrent majority and supermajority rules. * Aban ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States District Court For The Middle District Of Pennsylvania
The United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania (in case citations, M.D. Pa.) is a district level federal court with jurisdiction over approximately one half of Pennsylvania. The court was created in 1901 by subdividing the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The court is under the jurisdiction of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (except for patent claims and claims against the U.S. government under the Tucker Act, which are appealed to the Federal Circuit). Because Harrisburg, the state capital, is located within the district's jurisdiction, most suits against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are filed in the Middle District. Similarly, because York County Prison served as the largest Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) facility in the Northeast, the Middle District also adjudicated many immigration cases. The c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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