Topic: Court Created Solutions
Senator: Grassley
Date: SEPTEMBER 13, 2005
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GRASSLEY: Some legal scholars claim that when the political branches of government are slow to act, the broad and spacious terms of the Constitution lend themselves to court-created solutions.
Do you agree with this role of the court?
ROBERTS: I have said that it is not the job of the court to solve society's problems. And I believe that. It is the job of the court to decide particular cases.
Now, sometimes cases are brought and the courts have to decide them even though the other branches have been slow to act, as you say.
Brown v. Board of Education is a good example. The other branches in society were not addressing the problems of segregation in the schools. They were not just slow to act; they weren't acting. But that didn't mean the courts should step in and act.
But when the courts were presented with a case that presented the challenge -- this segregation violates the equal protection clause -- the courts did have the obligation to decide that case and resolve it and in the course of doing that, of course, changed the course of American history.
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