The most commonly raised criticism against the national consensus test of the ESD doctrine is that it constitutes an ongoing saga of judicial activism. Judicial activism occurs when a judge/justice upholds his or her own political, legal, religious, economic, or other beliefs contra society, thereby substituting the objectivity of existing laws for the subjectivity of personal preferences. Some may not feel that judicial activism is all that subversive. But judicial activism not only forces the judge/justice’s will on the people, but also it can greatly limit the legislative branch’s ability to function. The blurring of judicial and legislative lines can result in political stalemate, voter apathy, and a general distrust of government. Kimberly Bliss comments that under a democratic system “legislatures, not courts, are constituted to respond to the will and consequently the moral values of the people” since the former has more contact with the people and has, in theory, been elected by the voters (1334).
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Category Archives: Legal Philosophy
Conscientious Objection: Some Thoughts
What I think I find most problematic about Conscientious Objection, or at least what lays the groundwork of my distaste for it, is its unique context. To put it more straightforwardly, Conscientious Objection can, but does not always, involve genuine cases of life and death.
Rather than considering one-off examples, let’s try a cluster approach.
i. A woman is in dire medical need of an abortion; if she does not receive an abortion, she will inevitably die during childbirth. If she lives, the fetus will die and vice versa.
ii. A woman is in significant medical need of an abortion; if she does not receive an abortion, she will inevitably suffer permanent physiological damage. If the fetus lives, she will live but in immense pain for the rest of her life. If she lives (i.e. has an abortion), the fetus will die.
iii. A woman is not in any medical need of an abortion; she elects to abort the fetus within the federally and state regulated timelines allowed to do so.
Key Quotes from On Disobedience by Erich Fromm
On Disobedience by Erich Fromm
Introduction and Synopsis
Recently, I read this book on a whim. I was at a local bookstore and stopped to give it a quick glance; the first few pages interested me enough that I bought it. Looking back, I am honestly glad that I did. While some of Fromm’s pleadings have lost their urgency (e.g. the looming threat of nuclear war with the USSR (as it was known at that time)), he ultimately provides an insightful, scaffolded analysis about the concept of disobedience itself. Moreover, Fromm weaves together several other explanatory threads to properly contextualize disobedience and both its value and proper usage in contemporary society, using this as a vehicle to establish his political worldview known as humanistic socialism.
Excerpt: (4) Types of Guilt
*Originally published on: https://philosophynow.org/issues/147/What_Is_Guilt
In his work, The Question of German Guilt (1947), the German existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers attempted to resolve the impossible – understanding the conscious and systematic mass murder of Jews, Romani, homosexuals, political opponents, and other groups defined or perceived by the Nazi regime as ‘undesirable’ as well as being a direct threat to its totalitarian ideology of a ‘pure’ Aryan state.
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Tafacorian Thoughts 