In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., the U.S. Supreme Court decided that separate but equal was unconstitutional, and people protested for the imprisonment of the judges and their immediate removal. In Bush v. Gore, the court made a decision and decided the future president of the United States; people considered the ruling as judicial activism and called it the worst decision in the court’s history. The court itself said its decision in that case was to have no value as precedent.

The Supreme Court’s rulings have always been in defense of the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution was written to keep the courts separate from politics. It keeps judges responsible to the Constitution by removing them from the realm of politics.

In order to make those important decisions judges must be certain that unpopular decisions will not affect their personal lives. Concern with popular opinion robs justice from a system in which impartial rulings are necessary.

That’s why judges are nominated and approved, but not elected. It’s also why federal judges have no limits on their terms and face no recall vote. Their primary duty is to uphold the Constitution.

Roe v. Wade is among the most controversial cases, and remains deeply controversial and the target for Mississippi’s Personhood USA organization.

Personhood USA is a political organization led by Keith Mason, which wants to create an amendment in Mississippi that would ban abortion. The specific purpose for the legislation is to overturn Roe v. Wade, and regardless of the issue itself, we find political manipulation of the judicial system concerning.

Along with many other scholars and legal experts, we consider the amendment an attempt to place the law into the hands of the voters rather than the courts. If law was a matter of democratic vote, then Al Gore would have been the 43rd president of the United States. If that was the case, there’s no telling how long we’d have remain segregated.

Law isn’t a matter of democratic vote, it’s vested in a long legal process that insures justice and checks against tyranny of the majority. Democracy executed Louis XVI, banned minarets in Switzerland and banned the teaching of evolution in the 1920s.

We don’t want politics involved in law. We don’t want judges contending for votes or concerned about reelection. We shouldn’t subject justice to a popular vote, and we shouldn’t publicly force cases before the Supreme Court. Doing so risks the justice we all enjoy.