Did you ever see "Judgement at Nuremberg"?
No.
How often do people stand up to corruption and successfully oppose it?
I can't give an enumeration of all of those occurrences, but I'd say there have been quite a few such instances. I can, however, think of a few that should be well known to most Americans. One of the most poignant is
Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, KS. Another is
Roe v. Wade. Others include, but are not limited to:
- Marbury v. Madison -- "A law repugnant to the Constitution is void."
- McCulloch v. Maryland -- "Let the end be legitimate … and all means which are … consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional."
- Plessy v. Ferguson -- "Jim Crow laws are constitutional under the doctrine of ‘Separate but Equal."
- Munn v. Illinois -- "Businesses that serve the public interest are subject to regulation by state government."
- Schenck v. United States -- "Speech that presents a “clear and present danger” to the security of the United States is in violation of the principle of free speech as protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution."
- Near v. Minnesota -- "The liberty of the press … is safeguarded from invasion by state action."
One can find quite a few more. The point, of course, is that in many cases, what constitutes "corruption" (wrongness) is a matter of on what side of an issue one falls. If one likes the Court's decision, "the court is upholding the Constitution." If one does not like it, "the court is 'packed' with judicial activists." If one is of a mind that people are somehow prevented from exercising their Constitutional rights, "the system/Court" is corrupt." In reality, few, if any matters of corruption are binary or objective in nature.
Can you doubt that popular sentiment, not judicial reasoning, was behind recent SC decisions on same sex marriage, or gun rights, in Heller?
Yes, I can. Though I don't agree with every SCOTUS decision, upon reading the opinion and dissenting positions delivered by the various Justices, I pretty much without exception, as go modern decisions, see legal reason on both sides. I accept that in addition to the law each Justice's gut may tell them to favor one side's arguments over another.
I don't think it's a matter of there being legal insufficiency or reason on either side of recent SCOTUS matters, but rather the weighting the individual Justices place on the various legal facts and social mores that pertain to the case. For example, at the the end of the day, I think a woman's right to choose what goes on with and inside her body carries more weight than does any rights an unborn fetus may or may not have. As far as I'm concern, what the born want/need matters more than what we presume an unborn fetus wants/needs, even if that fetus' presumed need is merely to survive.
The very notion of progressive and conservative justices gives lie to the notion of judicial objectivity, of concepts like "strict constructivism" or "judicial activism". Are there conservative and progressive plumbers, or surgeons?
Well, yes. In your contextual meaning, there are certainly more and less conservative surgeons. Some surgeons will pursue a riskier approach to performing a procedure, or undertake a procedure that carries more risk/uncertainty of outcome(s), is more innovative and thus less "tried and true," and there are others who absolutely won't do that. I don't know if there are similar situations applicable to plumbing (because I know very little about plumbing and when I engage a plumber, I don't care what solution approach they apply so long as when they are done it works and I don't anytime soon have to readdress the same problem), but plausibly a "fix it or replace it" recommendation (or perhaps some other recommendation, such as one or another size/type of water heater, or whether to use copper or PVC pipes, etc.) a plumber might make to a customer is a reflection of their conservatism or progressivism/liberality with regard to their trade and its practice.
Both plumbers and surgeons, like Court Justices, are offering and have informed opinions, yet different ones may one some topic(s) prefer one approach to another. What be that other than the individuals being more or less conservative? Other than their weighing the relevant factors and advocating for a more or less conservative solution approach?