With my respect for you as a person, I think your idea here is demonstrating both ignorance and cynicism to the way the law works.
This type of interpretation of law is by design.
When lawmakers write a law, it’s specifically the judicial branch’s job to interpret it, which is exactly what is happening here.
It’s also exactly how you describe by design: legislators can pass laws that say whatever they want. They can pass a law that says that all left-handed people are subject to a 50% income tax even though such a thing would clearly violate the constitution. Legislatures can make illegal laws just by having the votes to do so. The role of the judicial branch is to interpret the constitutionality of laws that are made.
Critically, a lawsuit has to challenge a law’s legality and constitutionality in order for it to be interpreted as unconstitutional. There also has to be a harmed party that shows they have standing to make that lawsuit.
It’s entirely possible that nobody brought this specific argument to a judge in the last 158 years. It’s also entirely possible that what is acceptable by reasonable people in society has changed over time, which can alter the interpretation of laws. That is normal, expected, and by design.
I think comments like yours unnecessarily demonize “activist judges” when this is the designed function of their role.
The overwhelming use of civil instead of common law by the world would beg to differ that there is any consensus on this.
I agree with a lot of the advantages of common law that can sort of legislate through precedent. But it does make it basically impossible to be on notice of what is illegal and what isn't, particularly in the modern world where not only are there hundreds of thousands of law and thousands of pages of federal "regulations" bound as law but you also have to know all the precedent and asterisks to the interpretations to know what is actually illegal.
“They can pass a law that says that all left-handed people are subject to a 50% income tax even though such a thing would clearly violate the constitution”
I think that would be constitutional, but in conflict with other laws.
It would violate equal protection.
Someone forgot to tell Brett Kavanaugh.
How so? Left handed people aren't human. Just like how criminals aren't treated like normal humans with equal rights.
Seriously though, I don't think it technically violates anything given that we do have a set of humans (criminals) that we treat unequally. Culturally we believe theft and murder gives us the right to treat such people who do such things unequally and we've encoded that into law. It is simply another culture shift to interpret left handedness as the same thing.
I mean the example is absurd but it's a valid example. Maybe a more realistic example is pronoun usage and the forced recognition of multiple genders other than two. Taken to the extreme we would have to accept that anyones made up gender is real and we will be forced to recognize their beliefs that these things exist.
In CA you can already get this classified as harassment and get fired from your workplace.
And just to be clear I agree with the whole made up gender and pronoun thing. If you want me to refer to you with they instead of she or he that's fine, but the point is that all of this is clearly culture/opinion based and none of it is a universal right because what is "universal" is ALSO an opinion.
The left handed tax law could be passed and declared unconstitutional almost instantly under a challenge brought by any individual that referenced the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, to any federal court. if the government appealed it at all, the appeals court would agree with the lower court, if the government appealed it again, the Supreme Court would also agree with the appeals court and lower court, and it would be a phenomenal waste of time.
That's the only validity of the example.
Nothing occurring in the court system matches the angst of people that view recent appointments and decisions to be invalid. Anything overturned only affected the day to day life because there was never an actual federal law passed at all. The courts are operating much closer to how people imagine them, than in prior times, despite people believing the opposite is occurring. Media.
Didn't go that way for brown people with accents did it.
what specifically are you referring to? more like, which?
You're missing the philosophical principle that the more laws you have the wider the breadth of the domain that laws can interpret becomes, and that laws generally accrue. This is not by design, and there are jurisdictions which explicitly curtail this by having sunset laws.