Pros And Cons Of Judicail Review Essay, Research Paper

Adam Kimball

Pol. 1110

Instr. Madigan

12/10/96

Pros and Cons of Judicial Review

Judicial Review is the power given to Supreme court justices in which a judge has the power to reason whether a law is unconstitutional or not. Chief Justice John Marshall initiated the Supreme Court s right to translate the Constitution in 1803 following the case of Marbury Vs. Madison, in which he declared the Supreme Court as the sole interpreters of Constitutional law. This is one of the sole purposes of the Supreme Court of the United States. Many Historical thinkers would find some difficulty in imagining a government set up to limit the power of itself,but others would argue that this form of government best works for the people, and not against them. The treatment of the Constitution by the Supreme Court as a “living” document that is able to be translated differently over time for the good of the people has as many skeptics as it does supporters. But, if we do not allow the Supreme Court to translate the Constitution who then, should the people chose to do such an important job.

If we were to look back at the ideas and thoughts of some of the greatest political thinkers of our time, we would find that individuals such as Plato, Niccolo Machiavelli, and John Locke, would share extremely different views as to whether or not Judicial review, and the Supreme Court as a whole, would be successful in their ideal government situations.

One of the earliest political philosophers Plato, would find our present day governmental setup of the Supreme Court to be the ideal group to deal with the United States situation. Plato felt that government should be run by enlightened philosopher kings, that would rule for the good of the people, and not themselves. We today see the Supreme Court as a collection of the most “enlightened” thinkers of our day. They are chosen to make moral decisions about laws made by others in our society, and decide whether or not the laws we make are in the best interest of our nation as a whole. Plato knew that within any political State their would be corruption, to stop the corruption Plato felt that the philosopher kings would best rule because they would not indulge themselves in a corrupt society. They only believed in the truth, and justice that government is supposed to protect its people with.

Although Plato would not totally agree with the Democratic structure of our government, I believe that he would chose for our society, a state that is ruled by a similar group to that of our Supreme Court because, the members of the Supreme Court are chosen because of their ability to make sensible, moral decisions about issues that may contradict our Constitution.

Niccolo Machiavelli on the other hand, would find a great many problems with giving the Power to translate Constitutional law to anyone other than the President of the United States. Machiavelli would also totally disagree with the idea of having anyone make decisions about laws because they are morally incorrect. Machiavelli felt that virtue and idealism was one of the biggest…

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