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The Law Of The Land

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The United States has been a country whose slogan is the “Land of the Free”. “O, beautiful the patriot dream” - a dream of those who wanted freedom and rights established in 1789. The United States has since outlined its government, policy, and laws using the Constitution. This Constitution was first signed by 39 delegates and created a foundation for which the country to abide by. Surely with 39 men, there were bound to be differing ideas on how to interpret this document. The way one interprets it to make rulings can be classified into Judicial Philosophy and ideology. With this and the Judiciary Branch, the United States can make well informed decisions on laws and statutes. Judicial Philosophy is simply how one “ a judge understands …show more content…

Now, when decisions boil down, there are nine justices that vote using their own Judicial Philosophy and ideology. These are the supreme court justices. Each usually has either a conservative or liberal ideology and base their theories accordingly. Ideally, all would have a conservative original intent approach. This would allow restriction of federal overreach and eliminate the need of a mass of new policies. The combined approach would keep the government similar to what the Founding Father’s had created. “Undoubtedly, justices over the years have frequently looked to the intent of the framers” (E&W 23). This creates more opportunities for individual states to create laws instead of a nationwide policy. By participating in this approach, individual people would have more of an impact on the law instead of few representatives. An example of a court that had this approach was the Rehnquist Court that was in place 1986-2005 (SN). Rehnquist Court made decisions on protecting the framer’s intention based on text like the case Hustler Magazine v. Falwell (1988) which ended in protecting the cartoonist as it was freedom of speech (E&W 23-24). There are times when compromise needs to be made. Admittingly, a larger central government is sometimes needed in order to aid its citizens. Notably, during times such as the Great Depression and in the 1930’s. A consequence of having a more

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