I think it is not so much the judiciary as other features of the US Constitution that limit the passage of progressive law, such as the entrenched two senator per state rule. Most law in this country is not federal, however, and state constitutions and judiciaries as well as legislatures pose different issues. Prop 13 was a state ballot initiative, and no one would call it progressive, but that is a source of law not available at the federal level. And constitutional law cases are very rare at the federal level and fairly to very rare at the state level.
By the legal framework of the country, do you mean the federal constitution? But that is not a source of or limitation on most law that we have. Generally speaking we have a common law system, created by wealthy English judges long before the Constitution, even if we rely a lot more on legislation and a lot less on judge made law.
Sent from my iPad
On Sep 18, 2012, at 10:44 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Andie: "It's not a bad thing for thew judiciary to be judicially
> conservative, deciding cases in a limited way, and leaving it for the
> legislature to make the law."
>
> [WS:] Agreed, in the ideal world. But this is the United States,
> where constitution - or perhaps the inability to modernize it
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/us/we-the-people-loses-appeal-with-people-around-the-world.html?_r=2&ref=us
> - severely limits passage of progressive laws. Even if mildly
> progressive legislation does pass from time to time, it is later
> gutter by the judiciary as "unconstitutional" (cf. the medicaid
> provision of Obamacare or Proposition 103 in California). I am
> pretty convinced that if Obamacare had a public health care provision
> it would be struck down as "unconstitutional" in no time. It goes
> beyond a few reactionary SCOTUS justices - it is the fact that the
> legal framework of this country was designed by 18th century slave
> owners and businessmen to protect their property and has not changed
> very much since then,
>
>
> --
> Wojtek
>
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
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