Luc Begin
Critique&Humanism
Critique&Humanism
Eurozine
Judicial power and morality
Luc Begin
In many modern democracies basic rights have been constitutionalized. So judges have held a considerable power of regulation over social and individual practices. The exercising of legal control in matters that are morally controversial raises the problem of how judges make their decisions. There are many ways of thinking about judicial decision-making in this context. For some people, judges are, or should be, activist: that means they introduce their own moral judgments into the law when they personally disapprove decisions of other branches of government. For other peoples, judges are, or should be, passivist: they show great deference to these decisions, being neutral in their decision-making. Critical of these two approaches that do not carry great explanatory power, the author suggests seeing judges as mediators: they have to be impartial arbiter.