ose how America should “conform to the laws of the rest of the world.” Though the Court has not given itself the power to sign international treaties as Scalia suggests, it does go against Alexander Hamilton’s expectations that it should have “neither force nor will, but merely judgment.” By agreeing with international law without finding a direct consensus, the Court “proclaims itself the sole arbiter of our Nation’s moral standards.” This judicial activism, while well intentioned, “pre-empts the democratic debate through which genuine consensus might develop.” Justices Scalia and O’Connor rightly employed judicial restraint by insisting the Court find a clear consensus before making a decision that could alter an aspect of American society.

Since its inception, the Supreme Court has been forced to make difficult moral decisions. Roper v. Simmons is no exception. Even Justice O’Connor admits that if she were a legislator she would support a ban on juvenile executions. But since she is a Supreme Court Justice, she believes that the legal reasoning for a total ban is unsound. The question revolves around whether “activist courts” should impose their subjective views on a case. It would seem the Court did in this case, and the dissenters rightly reject the majority opinion. Drawing a “bright line” that separates adults from juveniles in the cases of heinous crimes seems illogical. Yet despite this, Justice Kennedy does mention that “the age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood” and that arguably, it should be where “the age for which death eligibility ought to rest.” In this case, the Court follows pubic opinion to base its decision. Though denounced by the dissenting judges, “judicial activism,” occasionally brings about landmark decisions like Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and thus enormous positive change for America. However, in this particular situation, the majority failed to find a proper national consensus that would make the ban excusable. Lacking sufficient data to justify the decision, the Court allows lower state courts to overrule them, a decision that Justices O’Connor and Scalia were particularly annoyed with. Due to the Missouri Supreme Court’s “unabashed refusal to follow our controlling decision in Stanford,” this may “invite frequent and disruptive reassessments” of the Court’s rulings. This is a danger to America’s judicial system, and should be dealt with immediately. Judicial activism should be done with respect to public opinion and international thought, not on ideological preferences.