Litigation

NY Times poll shows fundamental misunderstanding of the judiciary

By Ted Frank

The Times has an interactive poll that supposedly matches up one's opinions with the Supreme Court's, but, remarkably, every single question misrepresents the issues in front of the court. For example, it poses the question of Heller as "In general, do you agree or disagree that an individual should have a right to have a registered handgun at home?" But that's not the question the Court was confronted with: the Court decided whether the Constitution protects such a right. There's no "should" about it. By treating the judicial branch as a superlegislature making policy decisions divorced from legal considerations, the Times assumes that all judges are judicial activists.

Full post as published by Point of Law on July 25, 2010 (boomark / email).