Should the US Supreme Court Decide Cases Based on the Constitution or on Fairness?

[mkemse]

There is law and precedent on that. If a judge throws out evidence or testimony (or allows it) that there is either written law or precedent on, then any verdict will likely wind up in appellate court, where the judge may be overridden -- since judges don't like that, they do follow the law and precedent. If there's actually no law or precedent (extremely rare), then yes the judge does have to use his own judgment, but even that isn't in a vacuum -- it's based on the law and precedent for things similar to what he's deciding. It's extremely rare for judges to go very far afield.

Thanks