[Supermancho]

> At a minimum it should take a supermajority of a panel of judges to find a law 'unconstitutional'.

Legal or moral correctness, is not usually limited to a single judicial decision. When it is, it's remarkable enough that we learn about it early in schooling. Just because a Judge ruled to strike down a law, does not impact democracy in any way. It's a legal maneuver that will be challenged both in another legal arena and in the court of public opinion. These are the social frameworks that exist to protect against arbitrary bad actors and they matter, regardless if you think it's "OK" in isolation or not.

Everyone can agree that judges need some leeway in making decisions that are in the best public interest, regardless of the letter of the law...re: misspellings, grammar issues, ill-intent, etc. I happen to be a statist and think that the mere challenge to Federal Policy should not be discounted, because of futility. It's important to challenge governance from a distance, even today.

[hash872]

>It's a legal maneuver that will be challenged both in another legal arena and in the court of public opinion

It will not be meaningfully challenged in the court of public opinion, which is completely irrelevant to judicial decisions. If it'll be challenged in an appellate court.... why not limit decisions blocking the democratically elected legislature to a full appeals court of 15 judges, as opposed to just 1? One party can always find 1 extremely ideological 'judge' in East Texas to enjoin the entire country.

>These are the social frameworks that exist to protect against arbitrary bad actors and they matter.... Everyone can agree that judges need some leeway in making decisions that are in the best public interest

I do not agree, and you are not considering that the judges themselves may be making ideological policy decisions as opposed to 'the best public interest'. It may interest you to learn that several other developed countries do not have judicial review whatsoever- whatever the legislature passes is the law, full stop. (In Netherlands that's literally in their constitution!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty

[Supermancho]

> It will not be meaningfully challenged in the court of public opinion, which is completely irrelevant to judicial decisions.

Dismissing public opinion because you do not see a direct mechanism to affect change, is a misunderstanding of the inherent social power of Democracy. It is not irrelevant at all. Democracy is about policy being affected by public opinion through representation. A mechanism that doesn't suit an agenda in the short term is not toothless, just less swift than someone who is raging against a perceived injustice.

The concepts surrounding judicial review is taught in US high schools consistently. Even in the smallest of schools the hand wavy basics are described as:

1. congress makes laws

2. judicial interprets laws

3. executive enacts laws

> I do not agree, and you are not considering that the judges themselves may be making ideological policy decisions as opposed to 'the best public interest'.

Let's just dispense with the 'gotcha' retorts. Ofc I consider this. Judges are people and they have values that tend to align with their communities. The pessimistic view that they should all be considered bad actors is at odds with reality, as I know it.

> It may interest you to learn that several other developed countries do not have judicial review whatsoever- whatever the legislature passes is the law, full stop. (In Netherlands that's literally in their constitution!)

There will always have to be interpretation. Language (be it English or Dutch) is imperfect. Worse, it gets less precise as ideas become referential. The US and Netherlands are never going to use identical legal frameworks. Wishing that things were different has no utility for any possible future. Only the breakup of the US into another set of social contracts will proceed a change of that magnitude.

[hash872]

I have a Master's in Comparative Politics. What you learned in high school is simplified and incorrect.

I (somewhat incredulously here) can't tell if you really believe that the judiciary only interprets laws, but no, that's wrong. In a country with strong judicial review, like the US or Germany, they can literally strike them down for being unconstitutional. Once that happens, both popular will and the legislature are irrelevant. Your 1st paragraph.... no idea what you're trying to say there.

Just as a quick example, banning flag burning has always been overwhelmingly popular with the electorate, and every single state plus the federal government used to have anti-flag burning laws on the books. The Supreme Court twice struck down such laws, which made the public and Congress enormously angry. And.... popular will is irrelevant. The Court has the final word on this and any other topic that you choose to take up. You could read

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._Johnson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Eichman

And in general I think it'd help to read up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_activism. But yes, the judiciary essentially makes the law all the time (for example, see qualified immunity- created from whole cloth by the Court), in addition to striking them down as they choose. They hold ultimate power in our system of government. I don't think your general understanding of what judicial review is is correct

[ROTMetro]

Our court system is already constitutionally violatingly too slow (but we overlook it because who cares about the constitution nowadays) but yes lets change cases to have 15 judges that ought to be a workable solution. Or wait, we can have an appeals court (that normally has three judges hear an appeal) that though slow at least moves. I can't imagine if the courts were 15 times slower (because the judges were all on one case). I can't imagine every po-dunk jurisdiction that can barely justify 1 judge having 15.

[sophacles]

> Our court system is already constitutionally violatingly too slow

Might be caused by this type of thinking:

> I can't imagine every po-dunk jurisdiction that can barely justify 1 judge having 15.

Perhaps funding the court system to properly meet your first point would ease your concerns there?