It's clearly entirely possible for SCOTUS to declare a constitutional law unconstitutional, or vice-versa, and I'm sure this has happened lots of times in our history, at all levels of the judiciary. The possibility of poor if not clearly unconstitutional decisions being made is always there, and unavoidable when imperfect (and not always good faith) judges interpret these laws. I will concede you this general observation (but not the specific examples you gave).

But my question to you is this. What is your proposed remedy for this when it happens? One can yell sour grapes all one wants when the courts rule against one's interpretation of the constitution, but what is the remedy for when this happens? Surely not one of the other two branches, who are not empowered to overrule the courts, and most certainly not the public, which is not a formal part of government.

You may well be right that the courts sometimes issue unconstitutional rulings, but what remedy does that same constitution provide to deal with such situations? None that I am aware of. And what FORMAL, constitutional right does anyone outside of the courts have to deem these rulings unconstitutional and dispense with them as such? Again, I see none. And to suggest that it is otherwise is to suggest that the constitution is itself wrong, which is transparently absurd and self-refuting, because to do this is to suggest violating the constitution in order to uphold it.

You've clearly pointed out an obvious flaw in the constitution--one that as far as I can tell is inherent and not capable of being adequately remedied to everyone's satisfaction. And your unwillingness to abide this imperfection and desire for a more perfect practical and legal solution that cannot possibly ever be enacted is, I suppose, what makes you a conservative. But to me this just further demonstrates the inherent impracticaility of conservatism as an operative political philosophy, because its idealistic aspiration cannot ever be met in reality.

Explain to my why I'm wrong, and what your proposed remedy would be that would conform to the constitution as I (or perhaps you) know it, and actually do more good than harm.

The remedy is elections and judicial appointments. It may not be the timeframe you like, but it is a remedy all the same. Tsk.

To my great shock and surprise I actually have to agree with you on this one. These are indeed constitutional remedies to real or imagined unconstitutional judicial rulings. E.g. Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson.

But I was clearly (I thought) referring to a more immediate timeframe, as these measures take years if not decades to take effect--and sometimes entire lifetimes. And the more immediate measures that Mansfield and others here and elsewhere on the right have proposed to remedy such unconstitutional rulings are clearly unconstitutional, deriving their "legitimacy" from either some sort of "higher" law, or an alternative concept of the law that is nowhere to be found in our form of law--i.e. the constitutional one.

So I will rephrase: what immediate remedy or remedies to percerived unconstitutional judicial rulings do you or anyone else here claim are proscribed by the constitution? I suppose that there is always impeachment, but that to impeach a judge is among the most serious and difficult things to do under our legal and political system, rarely done and hardly practical most of the time. So what immediate AND practical constitutional remedy do you or others propose to deal with such rulings? Because that is the situation that Mansfield et all are talking about.

My contention is none. SCOTUS makes a ruling you believe is unconstitutional, you eat it for the time being and devise a long-term strategy for overturning it somehow, or perhaps containing it and chipping away at it--both of which have been done with Roe v. Wade for the past 30+ years.

But you do not ignore and defy an existing and as-yet not overturned ruling no matter how egregious and unconstitutional you believe it to be. Nor, for that matter, do you ignore and defy existing laws that you similarly believe are egregious and unconstitutional but have not as of yet been ruled to be so by the courts.

Which is precisely the reason why Bush's violation of FISA is clearly unconstitutional and illegal, because even if FISA is, as your side contends, itself clearly unconstitutional and illegal, not having been ruled as such by the courts (let alone SCOTUS), it must be, according to the constitution, treated as if it is both constitutional and legal.

Yet your guys have decided not to do so, because they have taken it upon themselves to assert the power of ruling on the constitutionality and legality of the law. And that is a power that they simply do not possess, according to the constitution, and I challenge you to demonstrate otherwise.

This, of course, was my original point, which you conveniently chose to ignore. All in a day's work for a troll, of course.