Ok, so in my Constitutional Law class this semester, the professor threw around the idea that Judicial Review is not in the Constitution on the first day of class. So, I obviously thought "How ridiculous. Even if it's not explicitly stated in the Constitution, it's implied and necessary."

But then as I was sitting in the McDonald's drive thru tonight, I suddenly started to second-guess my opinion on that. One reason is because it give the SCOTUS authority over the other two branches. The SCOTUS determines law, and it eliminates Checks and Balances.

Without going further into my opinions, here are two questions:

1. Is Judicial Review Constitutional? If not, is it still necessary?

2. Disregarding the Constitutionality of Judicial Review, does it give the SCOTUS too much power? Does it give it legislative power that it should not have as the judicial branch of the government?

I think that even with Judicial Review, the Supreme Court is weaker than either of the other two branches. To make the Judicial Branch even weaker would end up undermining checks and balances.

Regardless of how the branches of the federal government are balanced, someone needs to be interpreting the law, as there are sometimes ambiguities.

If it isn't done at the federal level, you wind up with things like nullification at the state level or below, which led to all sorts of conflict and nastiness.

If interpretive power is going to be imbued at the federal level, the judiciary seems to be the most balanced place to locate it.

Edit: Yeah, I'm posting in a 3 week old thread, just noticed that.

That's not bad, especially seeing as its only the third comment.

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