Stephen Yearwood
1 min readNov 19, 2021

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I would say that happens any time the Court judges a law. For sure, justice and 'constitutional' do not always conflict, but they can. Of course, as things stand there is no universal understanding of what justice is, so anyone could say in any particular instance that the two do not conflict, whereas someone else might say they do.

Even so, there have been many instances when laws were passed and judged to be constitutional but later ruled unconstitutional. The opposite has also happened. The Constitution didn't change in the meantime. What changed was the Justices' understanding of justice. While that indicates that the Constitution is not necessarily a permanent barrier to justice, it also demonstrates that 'constitutional' and 'just' are not always the same thing.

To my mind, all of that supports the largest point I was making, that having a small group of people deicide whether a law should be valid or not, based on the Constitution or anything else, increases arbitrariness. Declaring any law enacted in a democratic political process to be valid (unless it made the process less democratic) would make laws less arbitrary.

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Stephen Yearwood
Stephen Yearwood

Written by Stephen Yearwood

M.A. in political economy (money/distributive justice) "Please don't confront me with my failures/ I'm aware of them" from "These Days," as sung by Gregg Allman

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