“with the suggestion that the adherents of this philosophy tend to find constitutional violations and are willing to ignore precedent”

I’m reading this as Judges, having found grounds for a thing to be unconstitutional, ignore the incorrect precedent. If a law is unconstitutional, the precedent that bolsters said law is irrelevant. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land even if lawmakers don’t think so. In that light, the “Activism” is merely a correction.

I’m open to other interpretations.

My definition of “judicial activism” has always been whenever the court made a decision based on its desired outcome rather than the actual law and/or its previous rulings. This is pretty much consistent with the definition in Black’s Law Dictionary (“a philosophy of judicial decision-making whereby judges allow their personal views about public policy, among other factors, to guide their decisions, usu. with the suggestion that adherents of this philosophy tend to find constitutional violations and are willing to ignore precedent”). I’m very much against this.

That being said, David Strauss at the U of Chicago defines judicial activism as overturning laws as unconstitutional, overturning judicial precedent or ruling against a preferred interpretation of the constitution. That’s a completely different definition, and one that I don’t find objectionable. I suspect that part of the reason that the term “judicial activist” is thrown around so loosely is precisely because people have different ideas of what it means.

It’s a good thing the courts are asking for a bit more than that.

Well, finally getting around to it…

Anywho, I’m glad this decision was unanimous.