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Show Supreme Court's growing power raises questions Bountiful City has a huge pile of salt to be spread about on the city's roads during the season's oJ inclement weather. iw MA. crucial decisions, or rather the issues might not be more appropriately ap-propriately legislated by the people's representatives in Congress. Con-gress. Originally it was thought that the proper role of a court was to settle disputes between two conflicting parties, and not between differing factions of society. Additionally, there is the constitutional con-stitutional dilemma regarding jurisdiction and whether the Supreme Court is encroaching excessively ex-cessively upon states' rights in deciding some of the controversial issues that it does today. The overwhelming argument for turning over the policy-making mantle to the legislative element of government on the issues which ignite ig-nite the most heated debates and on those which have moral or ethical undertones, is the people's rights to lobby their representatives and to exr those representatives to set policy according to majority will. That principle is so basic to our democratic style of self-rule through elected officials, that it is not easily dismissed. Nevertheless, there is always the possibility that the majority may become oppressive and attempt to deprive the minority segments of society of their civil rights and liberties. lib-erties. If this were to occur, the legislators would be less inclined, less able to protect the individual liberties of citizens. It then becomes the job of the Supreme Court to step in and protect the constitutional rights of those minorities against majority tyranny. Probably the most essential evidence can be discovered in looking look-ing at the successful and unsuccessful unsuc-cessful efforts of the individual states and of Congress as representatives represen-tatives of their constituents to overturn over-turn or get around Supreme Court decisions with which the majority do not agree. The jurisdiction question becomes even more potent then. That aspect can be observed in the actions of those state legislatures which are currently trying to pass anti-abortion legislation that they believe can pass the test of approval of the Supreme Court. What is most interesting to note is that the issues which seem to cause the most explosive public outcry are those which will directly affect only a very small percentage of Americans, but about which most Americans have strong feelings based on principle (i.e. capital punishment, abortion). It is because of our tradition of democracy that allows us to grow up thinking, feeling and expressing the philosophies that we personally choose to embrace that the question of who makes our public policy is so important. If the trend continues, those whom we go to the polls to elect each year will form less and less of our public policies, and more and more of it will be decided within the courtrooms of the nation. By SHERRI EINFELDT Editor's note: This is Pari in in a senes explaining the Utah judiciary system. The popular debate in our society over the appropriateness of judicial lawmaking, especially as it pertains to the U.S. Supreme Court, is not a new one. In fact, the controversy is as old as the Constitution itself. The disagreements are not so much as to whether the Supreme Court should or should not actively engage in interpreting the Constitutionthat Constitu-tionthat question is settled by tradition. tra-dition. The debate is substantively about the degree to which the Court's Constitutional interpretations interpreta-tions ought to set public policy for the nation. There are numerous advantages and disadvantages to both extremes of the debate. For instance, the Supreme Court was purposefully set apart by the writers of the Constitution Con-stitution as a non-political branch of government, insulated from the impassioned masses by their non-elected, non-elected, lifetime tenure status. Naturally then, it is assumed that the nine justices are able to deliberate privately, honestly and openly, and to decide cases on their merits and tenets of the law, and not to be swayed by public opinion. The use of precedent suggests consistency con-sistency and uniformity will be the result of the Court's rulings. It is further assumed that the personal biases of the justices will not be a factor in how they decide the cases. However, human beings are products pro-ducts of their experiences, their education, ed-ucation, their socialization, and to expect that anyone, try though they may, could decide really difficult issues without being influenced by their own intrinsic value system is not very realistic. Nor is it realistic to suppose that all political and ideological persuasions are instantly instant-ly erased from the justices minds as they ascend to the bench. Some of the issues that these thinking and feeling men and women are forced to grapple with are of such magnitude as to cause the justices to become emotionally stressed and physically exhausted. Such pressure begs to question whether or not nine individuals alone should be making these |