No, courts don't just make up precedent out of thin air.
Courts follow laws as written, and make decisions and establish precedent whenever laws are vague, in edge cases, or when laws conflict.
But for stuff like this new laws are absolutely required. Why would you prefer unelected judges to be making stuff up, instead of democratically elected lawmakers whose literal job it is to decide these kinds of policies with input from constituents?
I suspect that the more you looked into what specific judges do the less you would trust them. It's rare that a judge gets much media attention outside of major scandals ('cash for kids' for example) and most people would struggle to even name one who wasn't a supreme court justice. We're far more familiar with the shortcomings of our representatives so we're less trusting of them. That doesn't make judges more worthy of trust though.
Most (good) laws did not originate from statute. Laws against murder originated in the courts (in the common law tradition). Torts originated in the courts. The claim of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress was invented / discovered within the past 50-or-so years. You’re fundamentally backwards on the assumption that laws generally originate from statutes. The most important, cornerstone laws of western society were merely “codified” in recent years as an attempt to undermine the judiciary… which under prevailing jurisprudence means they are mostly nullities.
It doesn't matter where our laws against murder were invented originally, historically.
Today in the US they are codified into actual statute.
I have never in my life heard the claim that the codification of law is an attempt to "undermine the judiciary"... after all, statutes passed by democratically elected representatives is the very cornerstone of democratic governance.
I'm genuinely curious, is your perspective something you've come up with on your own? Or did you get it from somewhere else, is there a name or movement behind it?
I've simply never come across the idea that the power of courts should be elevated so far above that of legislatures. (I mean, judicial review is one thing, but that's limited to conflicts between legislation and the constitution.)
It’s a process I’ve seen play out many times in my state. The legislature will pass a bad law. The courts will explain the situation, fix it, and move on.
The legislature then won’t have the votes to pass a contradictory amendment, so they “codify” in a way that leaves something out of context or creates an ambiguity.
Litigants then cite the statute instead of the precedent… even though they legislature never actually changed the law.
Courts follow laws as written, and make decisions and establish precedent whenever laws are vague, in edge cases, or when laws conflict.
But for stuff like this new laws are absolutely required. Why would you prefer unelected judges to be making stuff up, instead of democratically elected lawmakers whose literal job it is to decide these kinds of policies with input from constituents?