Six out of nine of the Supreme Court, seven out of 12 of the 11th Circuit Appeals Court, which turned down Terri's appeal, and most of the federal district court judges in the US.
Doesn't seem to have done much good.
I didn't know the number was that high. Nevertheless, just because a Republican appoints them, for some reason, that doesn't keep them from drifting left.
You wouldn't consider many of them moderates or conservatives, would you? I thought not.
As you pointed out when you said Doesn't seem to have done much good. this is a tough, tough problem that isn't going to be fixed easily.
Dear Balding_Eagle,
"You wouldn't consider many of them moderates or conservatives, would you? I thought not."
Well, if Republicans aren't putting many "conservatives" on the bench, then why are we bothering?
But I don't view the problem quite like that. It isn't a matter of "conservative" versus "liberal." Not exactly.
It's a matter of basic constitutional philosophy. To me (and I'm not a lawyer, so perhaps I oversimplify) the question is, "Is the judiciary the supreme and final arbiter of what is constitutional, legal, and morally permissible by law in the United States?"
If someone answers "yes," then they're part of the problem, not part of the solution. We have three CO-EQUAL branches of government, not two junior partners and the supreme judiciary. Each has the right to assert its view of the Constitution. None has the complete right to impose its lone view of the Constitution on the other two.
But ask most lawyers, and especially most judges, and once you get through all the song and dance (Why can a lawyer never answer a simple yes or no question with a simple yes or no? Because their time and billing programs don't track in time units that small.) you'll find that overwhelmingly, they believe that the judiciary is supreme over the other two branches.
Thus, we can elect all the Republicans we want. It won't do much good. There may not be enough lawyers in the United States who disagree with this consensus view to actually fill all the federal judgeships in the United States, to say nothing of state courts.
And the fact is, the Bush boys (all hat, no cattle) appear to have acceded to this viewpoint, as well. Gov. Bush seems to believe that the rulings of a probate judge have a higher precedence than the plain language of state law, which any number of legal scholars have advised authorize the governor to act in the face of the murderer greer's unconstitutional and illegal actions. President Bush seems to believe that a probate judge may entirely ignore federal law, sweep it aside, without so much as a la-di-da, and the president may take no action to remedy these illegal acts.
Okay, so it appears that the Bush boys are also judicial supremacists. At the very least, they refuse to take any action to disabuse the robed tyrants of this notion.
Thus, it becomes difficult to see just what the solution really might be.
Some folks wave around the impeachment clauses of the Constitution. That's nice.
But I suggest that folks read a bit of the history of the impeachment and conviction of the last federal judge to be so prosecuted, Alcee Hastings (Currently serving in the US House of Representatives from a brain-dead district and Florida. Hey, can we starve all those folks to death? There's really no evidence of brain activity, there.).
The reader will find that even with streamlined procedures and rules (ruled unconstitutional by lower courts, ultimately reversed by the Nazgul Nine), it was a time-consuming, lengthy process. If we posit that we wished to throw out, say, 10% of the well-over 1000 sitting federal judges at the appeals and district levels, and senior judges, we will find that the House and Senate will be in session roughly 36 hours per day, 9 days per week, 15 months per year, for a couple of decades.
Some justice once wrote that the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
We are not obligated to interpret the Constitution, as a people, as a nation, in a way that permits an out-of-control, tyrannical judiciary to destroy our Constitution and overthrow our democracy. Our elected representatives, the President and the US Congress, are permitted to take the actions necessary to rein in the unconstitutional courts.
sitetest