[swilhelm73]

Interesting that you ignore the rest of posting, pointing out the fact that the Supreme Court is insulated from normal democratic procedure and checks and balances, as it shreds your earlier statement.

The court, which can and does, with the mere will of five unaccountable men, or women, overrule both the executive and legislative branches, and rewrite the Constitution itself. This makes it easily the most powerful of the branches of government - and this is why it was not given the power of judicial legislation in the Constitution.

You have, however, indeed hit on the court's one potential weakness - the lack of a direct mechanism for enforcing its fiats and decrees. I've actually been working on and off on an article that address just this point...

This weakness is completely theoritical, however. At the federal level no one since Jefferson has seen fit to tell the Court they will not enact unconstitutional Supreme Court decisions. And in the current scheme of government followed by both the Dems and Reps there is no such option.

So to return to the world of what is and what is possible, what avenues are there for the people to stop the overarching power of our rogue Supreme Court?

[marktwain]

This weakness is completely theoritical, however. At the federal level no one since Jefferson has seen fit to tell the Court they will not enact unconstitutional Supreme Court decisions. And in the current scheme of government followed by both the Dems and Reps there is no such option.

Oh? How about Jackson and the Cherokees? How about Lincoln and the civil war? For that matter, Roosevelt used intense political pressure and pushed enough of his socialist/activist judges into the court to completely change the country and the way the Constitution was looked at.

Another great weakness of the court is that it can only strike down laws, it cannot make them. This brings us greater liberty, not less.

On the other side, the legislature can just keep on passing unjust, unconstitutional laws, as they did under Clinton with the "Gun free School Zones" law after the Lopez case. Then the court has to wait until another case comes up for review, meanwhile the rights of the citizens are tampled for another decade or more.