“I do think the establishment by the Founders of a Supreme Court, whose central purpose is one of interpretation”
RF,
Judicial review was not the purpose for the Supreme Court envisioned by the Founders. Judicial review is no where to be found in the Constitution. The SC was simply the highest court in the land. It had no more authority to “interpret” the Constitution than did the Executive or Legislative branches. Its decisions were intended to be binding only on the parties involved. It was never intended to be able to “strike down” or “nullify” laws.
While no lawyer, I was raised by a judge, my stepfather, so I know (a very little) about the law by osmosis (and a bookshelf lined with Indiana Code). Our legal system has its basis in English Common Law. That law (historically) employed the use of precendent, a process entailing elements of close examination and interpretation. One can go back even farther, to the Torah, of which commentaries and disputes over the fine points of The Law take up a library of its own. Of course, the mechanism for Constitutional revision is by means of amendments. But take, for example, the recent admission by the gun control lobby that yes, in fact, the Constitution does mean that the right to keep and bear arms is not confined solely to militias, that it is indeed an individual right. The fact that such a debate existed in the first place; i.e., individual vs. militia bearing of arms, demonstrates that wrangling over meaning is possible, thus requiring definitive judicial interpretation. The central argument, I think, concerning judicial activism revolves around the use of this very traditional judicial role being perverted into a vehicle for societal changes more properly within the purview of the legislative (and perhaps) the executive branches of the federal government. The so-called right to privacy is a sham; such a right doesn’t exist by any logical inference within the Constitution, yet—hey presto—activist justices made it appear because pro-abortion advocates knew they had to circumvent the legislative branch to make it happen. The problem is this perversion of the judicial branch and the encroachment of that branch outside its defined purview, not the exercise by justices of their very traditional, time-honored role as interpreters of the law and arbiters of its meaning.