"Bad" decisions depend upon which side you are viewing them from. For over 200 yrs. the 2nd Amen. was construed to apply to the Fed. Gov. It was a matter of "state's rights." Citizens United overturned 70+ yrs. of settled law.
Brown v. Board of Ed. violated every bit of stare decisis, original intent (during the floor debate the question was asked "does this mean that white children will have to go to school with black children?" The answer was a resounding "NO." Otherwise the 14th Amen. would never have made it out of committe.), law (see jim Crow), and a SCOTUS decision (seperate but equal; see Plessy v. Ferguson).
A "bad" decision depends upon your view, and there are always more than one legitimate and rational view on every court case. If there wasn't, cases would never make it before SCOTUS to begin with, they'd be shut down at the district level or the circuit level (a check on errant district court judges). Certainly, if a case was so one-sided, it wold never make it past an en banc review at the appellate level (a check on an errant circuit court judge).
"Upholding" the law, or Const. depends upon what your view of the Const. or law is. Again, there are at least 2 rational sides to every argument. Just because you or I "believe" the Const. means someting, does not make it so. Some of us may have a better idea of Const. understanding than others, but there are only 9 people whose opinions count. And they wear black dresses.
We can't dig up the F.F.'s and ask their opinions, and even if we could, they certainly all would not agree on everything in the Const. That is why the F.F.'s worded things vaugely, leaving the interpretation to be hashed out later. They could agree on vauge and ambiguos ideals, but not the specifics.
And even when they spelled out their intent in clear & plain language, they did not think of every ramification of their verbiage. Case in point; "Congress shall make no law...Abridging the freedom of speech..." 1st Amen. And it is first because it was so important it passed the 1st Congress post-haste, with scant disagreement.
Now, I think everyone will be onboard with me when I go out on a limb and say that the F.F.'s did not intend this to mean that one could give away state secrets to our nation's enemies (or, ala Justice Holmes, "shout fire in a crowded moviehouse"), but the clear and plain meaning of these words say it is permissible (that is a "strict constructionist" interpretation of the Const., which is different than an "original intent" view). The Const. does say "no law," but who can say that such speech ought to be lawful?
Again, activist courts can be good or bad, depending upon your view. It was constitutional for around 80 yrs. to segregate negroes from whites. And even longer for miscegenation laws, as per the orininal intent of the 14th Amen.'s framers. So, who really wants to argue that activist courts are always bad? The Const. is not a perfect document. If it was it would not have been amended 27 times, it is a work in progress. And it's the best we have for a basis for governance.
