The Constitution says what the Supreme Court says it says?

Yes. There is no other competent authority.

 

Other than the executive branch.

 

Nope. They do not have that authority.

 

Neither does the judiciary.

 

Yes, they do.

 

Oh, right, because they said they do.

 

Yes, they have that authority.

 

According to them

 

if republicans thought they could get away with it....

the golden cow is too old though, and they would risk Obama winning again, so doubt they go there

 

Their view is the only one that matters.

 

Yes, that's their opinion.

I look forward to the SCROTUS gang's reaction when someday the president says, "My opininon of what the constitution means is the only one that matters." It will be rich!

 

Theirs is the only opinion that matters.

 

To them and their lickspittles.

 

To the US and our constitutional government.

 

There is no constitutional justification for "judicial review". Oh wait, I forgot. They SAID they have that power.

 

Yes, and that's all that matters.

 

So we agree that they usurped power not granted to them in the constitution?

 

No. I ignored your silly first sentence and replied to the second.

 

There are two primary schools of thought when it comes to Supreme Court interpreting the Constitution: contextualists and originalists. Contextualists are a wild card, originalists tend to be more consistent, but no originalist has been fully consistent, which opens them up to criticism.

Contextualism is also thought of as the "living Constitution" ideology. This is what most law schools now teach, as it is what most liberal judges believe is proper. Contextualists claim they interpret the Constitution based on the context of what is written and what the legislators wanted. For example, if a case comes before them and it isn't neatly covered by law (and sometimes even if it is), they'll make a ruling based on their opinion of what the goal was at the time and then apply it to modern society. This is how the Court comes up with rulings like Roe v Wade, where they read the 14th Amendment and claim that a right to privacy means you can kill your fetus. They ignore the fact that when the 14th Amendment was written, it didn't mean that, and, in fact, most states had laws against it. Keep in mind, using this logic the Supreme Court could claim anything is protected by the 14th Amendment.

Originalism is very closely related to textualism. This is the idea that you have to look at what a law meant at the time it was written and make a ruling based on that. Any changes to the interpretation need to go through Congress rather than the courts since Constitutional amendments are difficult to achieve, and the Courts changing the meaning is effectively writing law. Going back to Roe v Wade, originalists would say that the 14th Amendment had never been understood to mean there was a right to abortion. This interpretation was invented in Roe v Wade by the Court. In fact, the court wrote out a long decision basing specific individual "rights" of the mother and the state based on each trimester that had no bearing in any law. The Court effectively wrote a law when they wrote the Roe v Wade decision.

So to answer your question, it depends on the method a judge uses to interpret the Constitution. There are examples where a matter comes before a court where there is little history to account for the meaning of a law in relation to a specific case, and this can result in originalists not agreeing with each other. You see this in the current court where Kavanaugh, Barret, Roberts, etc often come to a different conclusion than Thomas and Gorsuch. However, you can pretty much always determine how the liberal justices will make a ruling and it is almost always based on whatever is best for liberal ideology or Democrats. This is because they're allowing their modern world view interpret laws. They rarely ever disagree with each other because they have a similar political ideology and their rulings do not rely upon the history or meaning of the law as it was passed by Congress. They believe it's their job to add the "context" based on their modern worldview.

So to answer your question, yes... for some judges what is written in the Constitution doesn't matter as much as their opinion of what it should mean. This is how you get decisions like Roe v Wade and it's why every nominee was asked by Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee what their opinion is on precedent because they know the strongest argument to keep Roe in place was always that it was already decided and not because the 14th Amendment actually gave a Constitutional right to abortion. The history and legislative intent disagrees with them.

 

The supreme court made up "judicial review" out of whole cloth. It has no more legitimacy than executive review.

 

Nope. Ignorance is not an argument. I have already provided you a brief summary of the foundation for (and inevitability/necessity of) judicial review. This discussion has concluded.

 

If all you have is that the supreme court says that they have the power of judicial review, then okay. It's meaningless unless it is in the rules laid forth in the constitution.

 

Concluded.

 

Seriously? That only happens when one interprets what the Bible says about God creating the Earth is seven days.

 

Congress can and does pass laws contradicting each other and the Constitution. How do you suppose a citizen protects their rights that are being violated if not by filing a lawsuit? Have you thought your argument through?