The official term is “Judicial Tyranny.” There’s really no point to operating a Democratic Republic when rogue, activist judges can overturn the will of the legislature, which is nothing short of overturning the will of the people.
Governor Matt Bevin signed a new piece of Kentucky legislation that banned abortions after the detection of a heartbeat. Within mere hours, Judge David J. Hale in the state’s western judicial district struck down the law. Hale claimed that the law was “unconstitutional.”
The Judge’s ruling coincides with an ACLU lawsuit against Kentucky for passing the law, claiming that it would ban up to 90% of abortions in the state, given that most women don’t know they’re pregnant until after their 7th week of pregnancy, when the heartbeat would already be detected.
Kentuckians who aren’t homicidal monsters would consider that a good thing. The ACLU considers it awful that murder would only be allowed before a heartbeat is detected.
Brigitte Amiri, the deputy director for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said, “Taking another page straight out of the anti-abortion playbook, Kentucky became the latest state to pass a law that will ban abortion before most women know they’re pregnant…These bans are blatantly unconstitutional, and we will ask the court to strike it down.”
Georgia and Tennessee have also recently passed similar heartbeat laws. A judge in Iowa struck down a heartbeat law passed there.
Sooner or later, Americans will have to decide if the power of judicial review as understood by legal precedent is the proper interpretation of the United States Constitution. So long as judges are able to so easily overturn legislatures, there is no balance of power, and a few judicial tyrants are running the entire country by the power of fiat.
