Assuming there was you seem to think it is the courts imprimatur to get a whiff of populism and then make laws from the bench that accord with that populism.
That is not the purpose of the courts, it is the legislatures duty to make laws. The US Constitution guarantees a republican form of government to every state in the union. Judicial oligarchy is not a "republican form of government".
Thirty Eight states have passed DOMA. The people of Massachusetts last year gathered enough signatures to put DOMA on the ballot for referendum. The Massachusetts Constitution explicitly states that marriage is the sole province of the Governor and the legislature. And yet you claim that the Mass SJC is not engaging in judicial activism or if it is it is justified in doing so by populist sentiment.
In either case your idea of the duties of courts to intrepret and not make laws are 180 degrees out of phase from mine and never the twain shall meet. It is basically senseless to carry on the debate becasue the only thing getting any sharper is the animosity.
LOL!
You're kidding, right?
I was there in the early 70's.
Free love, women's rights, burn the bra, and have sex without facing the consequences.
From the moment Roe v. Wade was handed dowen by the Courts, it was welcomed by a large segment of the society.
At least be honest when we "debate".
Let's stick to the evils of Judicial activism, shall we?
In your opinion then, I guess that "Brown v. Board of Education" was a good example of the evils of Judicial activism, because it overturned "Plessy v. Ferguson" which was a great decision by the Court as it was based on the right of the State to enact and enforce "separate but equal" laws.
Am I starting to understand you now?
In 1948, when 30 states had laws on the books barring interracial marriages, the California Supreme Court, in the case of Perez vs. Sharp, ruled that the state's anti-miscegenation law violated the due process and equality guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment, more than 90 percent of Americans were against the decision, and supported the laws. At best, they believed such marriages went against the traditional definition of marriage or against God's law. At worst, some wanted to "preserve racial integrity" by preventing a "corruption of blood" and "a mongrel breed of citizen."
Sometimes, a whole bunch of people agreeing on a bad principle is nothing more than a clear indication that people can be wrong in large quantities.