(Download) "An Interpretivist Judge and the Media. (Twenty-Seventh Annual National Federalist Society Student Symposium)" by Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: An Interpretivist Judge and the Media. (Twenty-Seventh Annual National Federalist Society Student Symposium)
- Author : Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy
- Release Date : January 01, 2009
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 277 KB
Description
The debate over the role of the judiciary has been particularly intense in Michigan for the past decade. With four of the seven justices on the Michigan Supreme Court committed to a traditional jurisprudence--one that views the responsibility of the courts to say what the law "is" rather than what it "ought" to be (1)--there is no state judiciary in which this debate has been more directly engaged than in Michigan. This debate is reflected by majority opinions containing strong counter-responses to dissents in which issues of jurisprudence are central; (2) it is reflected by opinions according careful attention to a broad range of interpretative issues such as the merits of an "absurd results" rule, (3) the uses and abuses of legislative history, (4) the hazards of premature invocations of ambiguity, (5) and the propriety of "broad" and "narrow" interpretations of the law; (6) and it is also reflected by some of the most costly and contentious state judicial elections in the nation's history. (7) What most obviously distinguishes the judicial debate within Michigan--and increasingly within other states--from that within the federal judiciary is the reality of periodic election. Although this reality properly should have no impact on judicial analysis or the substantive results of decisions, it does, as a practical matter, impose some greater obligation on state judges to identify their judicial principles as clearly as possible so that the people can understand their differing attitudes toward the exercise of the "judicial power." As it becomes increasingly evident to the people that judges are not fungible, and that differences among them are of considerable consequence to the public policies and legal cultures of their states, it becomes increasingly important that the elected judge communicates the values and philosophies underlying his decisions. After all, the people are entitled to know that Circuit Judge "Scalia" and District Judge "Breyer," for example, are competing for an open position on the state supreme court.