Judicial Restraint

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Judicial Activism v. Judicial Restraint
The Supreme Court often oversteps its bounds as protectors of individual rights: while its use of judicial activism can at times secure citizens’ civil liberties and rights and can also check the power of the other branches of government, the employment of personal or political motives in these decisions often lose the integrity of judicial review. In these cases, the Supreme Court justices are endowed with tremendous power and may use this power to further their own agendas rather than defend the rights explicitly laid out in the Constitution. In order to limit their own exercise of power, the Supreme Court should attempt to use judicial restraint whenever the law does not directly violate the Constitution …show more content…
The Supreme Court justifies their decision by saying that if they have just made same-sex marriage legal in all states, no state would have a reason not to honor a same-sex marriage license from a different state. There is a better, constitutional reasoning for honoring the marriage licenses from other states. In Article IV of the Constitution, Section I discusses the Full Faith and Credit Clause, in which “full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.” By this clause, driver’s licenses are legal and credited in all other states, even if the legal driving age is different among different states. In the same manner, this clause should apply to same-sex marriage licenses from different states, even if they don’t necessarily have the same laws concerning marriage. If the Supreme Court had used this reasoning in their case, this would have been a good use of judicial restraint, and would have allowed for the people in these states to exercise their democratic right to vote on whether or not their personal state would be allowed to give marriage licenses to same-sex …show more content…
The 10th Amendment states that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Thus, when the Supreme Court continues to creatively reinterpret the Constitution, stretch into its implied rights, or consider their personal or political opinions over the explicit rights and liberties outlined in the Constitution, they are effectively taking away the rights of the states that are directly guaranteed in the Bill of
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