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I had the impression that judges were supposed to "not like laws" if those laws contravene constitutional rights, constitutional guarantees of equality, and that this part of a judge's job was a cherished "check and balance" in case of the legislature overstepping its constitutional mark.

That is absolutely correct. It is pretty much the definition of a judge's job to interpret law. This is how precedent is made. The current notion of "activist judges" is complete horeshit. Those judges are doing their jobs and are no more "activist" than the conservative judges that make the same sorts of decisions in the opposite direction. I might disagree with them, but I at least recognize that they're doing their jobs as stated.

It has often, at least in the last 30 years or so, apparently been a part of the Republican agenda to make up terms to apply to liberals and turn them into dirty words. It seems to have started with the word "liberal" itself, though they didn't make that one up. And not that they have an exclusive contract with it, but the Republican party-liners seem to do a really good job of buying into the jargon wholesale. Language is a virus.

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UK judges have only recently acquired similar powers -- overturning laws not because they're "unconstitutional" as such, as there is no constitution, but overturning them because they contradict the Human Rights Act and/or European human rights treaties.

Same sort of thing, really. They're just recognizing that laws are in violation of other laws that have higher standing.

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This has caused a certain amount of political fracas, and interestingly it's again mainly the Right who are objecting to this judicial oversight.

In your case, though, I imagine that it's mostly do to the fact that those people don't want to be subordinate to any other governmental organization, and that doesn't really seem to be the case here. No one is really arguing the validity of the US Constitution as it applies to the rights of the individual states.
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Bitt Faulk