Judicial Activism
Definition of Judicial Activism
Note: See a more comprehensive approach to the Judicial Activism legal concept in the American Law Encyclopedia
An approach to decision making in the American judicial system. Judicial activists see the appellate courts as playing a substantial and affirmative policy role. Judicial activism prompts judges to entertain new policies, even those that would depart from adherence to established legal rules and precedents. Judicial activism can manifest itself in a number of ways, but most important is a court's adoption of its own policy preferences over those of the legislative or executive branches. That is exactly what occurs when a court invalidates a governmental action as unconstitutional. Judicial activism may also extend legal rules to establish specific requirements for governmental action. The opposite of judicial activism is judicial self-restraint, an approach that discourages judges from pursuing personal political, economic, and social values and that generally defers to the policy initiatives of the legislative and executive branches. While both activists and self-restraintists acknowledge that a certain degree of policy making is an inevitable result of deciding law questions, they differ on how aggressively and how extensively judges pursue policy making opportunities.
See Also
Judicial Review (Law of the United States) Judicial Self-Restraint (Law of the United States) Legal Realism (Law of the United States) Policy Making (Law of the United States).
Resources
Judicial Activism Related Resources
- Judicial Activism in the United States Legal Encyclopedia
- Judicial Effects and Policies Keywords in the United States Legal Encyclopedia
- Judicial Policies Keywords in the International Legal Dictionary
Notes
- “Judicial Activism”, The American Law Dictionary, 1991, California
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