# Do you have to explain where you got a bunch of cash

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-to-explain-where-you-got-a-bunch-of-cash/996033>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 13, 2024, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-to-explain-where-you-got-a-bunch-of-cash/996033 "2024-01-13T06:52:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 146

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2024, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-to-explain-where-you-got-a-bunch-of-cash/996033/146 "2024-01-17T14:22:35Z")

</div>

> [@Princhester](#):
>
> My pet hate is people saying that the courts support something because they uphold legislation. There may be exceptions but as a rule courts _do not_ support this sort of unjust malarky. However, courts are subordinate to legislature. When a statute is clear and a court can’t find a loophole, it has no option but to enforce the statute.

You have discovered [legal formalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_formalism). As you may guess, the fact that it has a name like “formalism” and not simply “the law” indicates that there are other schools of thought. To quote Wikipedia:

> The antithesis of formalism is [legal realism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_realism), which has been said to be “[p]erhaps the most pervasive and accepted theory of how judges arrive at legal decisions.”

Myself? I’m a legal realist, and I think formalism is what activist conservative judges insist they’re adhering to when in fact they’re just engaged in a more reactionary (pro-conservative) kind of legal realism.

> [@Princhester](#):
>
> Every time someone like you blames the courts and not the legislature, the assholes who pass this sort of legislation snigger at you behind your back and high five one another about how, once again, they have pulled the wool over your eyes and ducked the blame.

Have you considered that the reverse might also be true? That every time a court throws its hands up and says “Gosh, my hands are tied, there’s just nothing I can do about this outright horrific piece of legislation unless the legislature acts to change it!” the judges who make those kinds of rulings snigger at you behind your back and high five one another about how, once again, they have pulled the wool over your eyes and ducked blame?

Because, you know, a lot of those same judges, interesting enough, are liable to “find” ways to invoke higher precedent (eg: their own personal favorite interpretation of the constitution) when they come across a law they _don’t_ like. But still they say “Oh, I’m not a inventing the law or overriding the will of the people or the legislature: I’m just following the higher law of the Constitution. Calling ‘balls and strikes’ you know?”

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-to-explain-where-you-got-a-bunch-of-cash/996033)._