Judge Bork: Judicial Activism Is Going Globa

Fox News ^ | 9/11/03 | Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

[truthandlife]

Justices have started to cite foreign sources to justify the way they rule at home, oftentimes looking toward liberal courts no matter how preposterous the connection to the cases being heard at home, said retired Judge Robert Bork (search).

Bork, whose third book, Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide View of Judges, was released this week, said judicial activism has been growing and evolving in the United States since the 1960s, and is, in fact, going global.

[Michael.SF.]

Like how in the 1800's corporations were given the rights of citizens by judges.

The best you can do to refute Mr. Bork's comments is to go back over 100 years?

Why not try citing something a little more relevent to today? Such as the disgraceful subversion of the Constitution by the Democrats, as pertains to judicial appointments?

Oh, btw, why not be honest and create a profile, like most of us do. Try reading mine as an example.

[esopman]

Bork Booster Bump! Thank you for posting this.

[viaveritasvita]

>>Bork said. “It is farther along than you think.”<<


An understatement of Biblical proportions.

[DCBryan1]

Judge Bork: Judicial Activism Is Going Globa

Are you series?

This is really hugh.

[bethelgrad]

This is kind of like Sen. Spector citing Scottish law after the impeachment trial.

[inquest]

i just need a definition of judicial activism that doesn't confuse one with the evolution of common law.

Judicial activism (which, as you correctly noted, has been practiced on both ends of the spectrum) refers to a type of judicial treatment of the Constitution, not of common law. Unlike the latter, the former does not "evolve", except by deliberate amendment under Article V. Simply put, the term refers to the practice of judicially "amending" the Constitution under various pretexts, so as to promote the ideology of the judge. Citation of foreign law (particularly law that's foreign to the Anglo-American tradition) is a rather egregious form of judicial activism.

[inquest]

Citing foreign law - particularly recent foreign law - in order to make the case that something is unconstitutional, demonstrates, at best, a certain lack of seriousness and studiousness in wanting to get at the meaning and intent of the Constitution. That said, judicial activism isn't always a cut-and-dried easy thing to prove, and the accusation is certainly susceptible to being falsely bandied about. That doesn't make the phenomenon less real.

[jwalsh07]

Federal judges are bound by the US Constitution, not the French or German equivalent. What's so hard to understand about that?

[mo]

I should think any US citizen who has been tried under such a judge would have at least basis for appeal....at least.

[jwalsh07]

Well, that's where you'd be wrong. In Lawrence v Texas Justice Kennedy and the 4 dwarfs found a transcendent right to sodomy based in large part on the mores of Europe.

Before we get side tracked, I'm not endorsing governments peeking in windows or unenforceable laws but in this case and others that is a decision for the state of Texas, not France and Sweden.

Read the decision.

[jwalsh07]

I can only hope and pray that you are not a member of the judiciary who has sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

[inquest]

From a Virginia criminal statute authored by Thomas Jefferson:

"Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least." Source

[truthandlife]

BUMP

[Sir Gawain]

international law would never trump the Constitution

Unless we enter into a treaty.