LETTER: No, the Supreme Court doesn’t rule based on popular opinion

In her Monday letter to the editor, Joann Simmons writes that, “The radical hijack was placing so many conservatives on the court, where none of their rulings reflect our constitutional values and opinions of the citizens.” The justices on the Supreme Court, be they conservative or liberal, are not supposed to decide cases based upon the constitutional values and the opinions of citizens. Under Marbury v. Madison, the mandate of the justices is to decide cases based upon the solid constitutional precedent in prior rulings of the court and to decide cases based upon the clear language in the Constitution.

The opinions of the citizens and their constitutional “values” are not the basis for Supreme Court decisions. Case in point: Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg always said that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided insofar as the “right to privacy” is not in the Constitution and, therefore, the issue of abortion should be reserved to the states per the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.