Posted on 11/09/2010 7:29:51 AM PST by WebFocus
Results of the recent elections showed that growing numbers of Americans are fed up with “public servants” who act as if they are public masters. This went beyond the usual objections to particular policies. It was the fact that policies were crammed down our throats, whether we liked them or not. In fact, laws were passed so fast that nobody had time to read them.
Whether these policies were good, bad, or indifferent, the way they were imposed represented a more fundamental threat to the very principles of a self-governing people established by the Constitution of the United States.
Arrogant politicians who do this are dismantling the Constitution piecemeal — which is to say, they are dismantling America.
The voters struck back, as they had to, if we are to keep the freedoms that define this country. The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution by getting rid of those who circumvent it or disregard it.
The same thing applies to judges. The runaway arrogance that politicians get when they have huge majorities in Congress is more or less common among federal judges with lifetime tenure or state judges who are seldom defeated in elections to confirm their appointments to the bench.
It was a surprise to many — and a shock to media liberals — when three judges on Iowa’s supreme court were voted off that court in the same recent elections in which a lot of politicians were also sent packing.
These judges had taken it upon themselves to rule that the voters of Iowa did not have the right to block attempts to change the definition of marriage to include homosexual couples. Here again, the particular issue — so-called gay marriage — was not as fundamental as the question of depriving the voting public of their right to decide what kinds of laws they want to live under.
That is ultimately a question of deciding what kind of country this is to be — one ruled by “we the people,” or one where the notions of an arrogant elite are to be imposed, whether the people agree or not.
Those who believe in gay marriage are free to vote for it. But, when they lose that vote, it is not the role of judges to nullify the vote and legislate from the bench. Judges who become politicians in robes often lie like politicians as well, claiming that they are just applying the Constitution, when they are in fact exercising powers that the Constitution never gave them.
If they are going to act like politicians, then they should be voted out like politicians.
Media liberals, who like what liberal judges do, spring to their defense. The media spin is that judges were voted off the bench because of “unpopular” decisions and that this threatens judicial “independence.”
Since this was the first time that a justice of the Iowa supreme court was voted off the bench in nearly half a century, it is very doubtful that there was never an “unpopular” court decision in all that time. The media spin about “unpopular” decisions sidesteps the far more important question of whether the judges usurped powers that were never given to them by the Constitution.
As for judicial “independence,” that does not mean being independent of the laws. Being a judge does not mean being given arbitrary powers to enact the liberal agenda from the bench, which means depriving the citizens of their most basic rights that define a free and self-governing people.
While removing three state supreme-court justices at one time in Iowa is news today, the very same thing happened in California back in the 1970s. Every single death penalty imposed by a trial court in California was overturned by the state supreme court, with Chief Justice Rose Bird voting 64 times in a row that there was something wrong with the way each trial had been conducted. That was world-class chutzpah.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that Arizona does not have a right to require proof of citizenship before someone can vote. Where does it say that in the Constitution?
The time is long overdue to stop treating judges like sacred cows, especially when they have so much bull.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution
...IMHO, the Iowa vote was just the beginning...there’ll be more to come...people are fed up with the judiciary system in this country.
I’m in favor of stripping federal judges of lifetime tenure - a federal law can can change “good behavior” to a term of ten years subject to a retention election.
This will ensure judicial independence and give voters the ability to remove judges who try to make up the laws rather than interpret them.
It would put an end to overreach by liberal activist judges on our federal courts. Its a much needed and long overdue reform.
Meanwhile in Oklahoma, a judge just suspended the result of the states’ referendum to ban their courts from referring to Sharia law in any court cases.
Why hold a referendum at all if ONE or a FEW JUDGES from the Bench can simply overturn it and give the middle finger to the wishes of millions of people?
It's worse than that. They are exercising powers they WERE given. So what exactly is Sowell's solution? Should judges be elected for a fixed term? Should they be put on the ballot under special circumstances? (petitition?) I'm all for finding solutions to our fundamentally flawed national judiciary. My only quibble is that I think what we have is the natural and predictable result of Article 3, not some brazen usurpation. So I'm all for proposed fixes.
RE: I’m in favor of stripping federal judges of lifetime tenure - a federal law can can change “good behavior” to a term of ten years subject to a retention election.
Would that also apply to the justices of the US Supreme Court?
Remember this, if it were to be applicable to the SCOTUS as well, we just might see outstanding justices like Scalia or Thomas or Alito OUT OF THE SUPREME COURT for any political reason at all.
Yes.... I see no reason why judges should be insulated from the will of the people.
If they do a good job, they should be retained. If they don’t, the President can name their replacements.
The problem we have is that politicians, mostly liberal, have placed leftists on the bench to push their communist agenda forward. The politicians, in collusion with the leftist press, have told us over the years that they can't do anything about the judges and have led us to believe that impeachment was out of the question.
Thus, we have judges legislating from the bench and usurping both the powers of the elected officials and our freedoms and liberty with the tacit approval of the politicians.
I’d get rid of lifetime tenure.
Retention elections of judges are the problem. There is no mechanism to publicize the decisions these appointed judges make unless a concerned reporter chooses to make an issue of the case (with editorial consent) and make it public. Absent such publicity, these judges are rarely removed from the bench. Some other means of shining the light on their decisions for the voters to see needs to be enacted into law.
In fact, those politicians PREFER to have the judges be supra-legislators so they (the politicians) don't have to go on record making unpopular votes. And they try to sell it to us as "taking politics out of the judicial process" when in fact it's exactly the opposite.
Here in Iowa, people aren't inclined to vote judges out. However,the democrats who controlled the state legislature (and still contol the state senate) absolutely refused to allow a pro-marriage amendment to come up for a vote. This was finally our chance to voice our opinion on the matter - isn't it the people's opinion that's supposed to count the most? - and you can see the results. And all along the way, we (the people) get accused of injecting politics into it when we're trying to take the politics out of it. Somewhere, Screwtape is smiling and Wormwood is taking notes.
When my boys were young I always took them with me when I voted. I told them “when in doubt, vote “em out.”
We tried to mount a campaign to boot two of these bad boys who were on the ballot for retention but failed for lack of the ability to get the word out to the electorate. Maybe we can get the other three who come up for retention in 2012.
Indeed. If those liberal judges look on the Constitution as a "living document", subject to change at will, then surely their jobs can be looked upon as "living tenure" and treated the same way.
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