Posted on 10/10/2015 8:10:22 PM PDT by cradle of freedom
Has a Supreme Court decision every been overturned? Does the Constitution permit a way to fix a bad Supreme Court decision?
Some added fun off the top....
Supreme Court Justice David Kennedy - also known as the key swing vote on decisions (where he can side with liberals for a 5/4 vote, or side with conservatives for a 5/4 vote)...sometimes has been known to ignore previous Supreme Court decisions (the stare decisis mentioned earlier) ...and will overturn prior decisions.
AND - a later more refined Kennedy has overturned an earlier less informed Kennedy....Check some decisions related to how the death penalty can be applied, or decisions related to homosexual rights. And he has overturned some of his prior decisions!
Given the controversies concerning the ratification of 14A, I have to agree with you that the Civil War overturned Dred Scott.
Otherwise, as other FReepers have indicated, Supreme Court case decisions have been overturned by both the Suspreme Court, and also amendments to the Constitution.
But we need to always be suspictious of split Supreme Court decisions. This is because the Founding States relatively simple rules for division of federal and state government powers are not as gray as many split SCOTUS decisions would lead us to believe.
3. The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction and no excuse for interpolation or addition. United States v. Sprague, 1931.
The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819.
Now that it's all out there, I can not be blackmailed, nor probably elected.
[N]othing in the Constitution has given [the judiciary] a right to decide for the Executive, more than to the Executive to decide for them. Both magistracies are equally independent in the sphere of action assigned to them the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what are not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the Legislature & Executive also, in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch.
- Thomas Jefferson
To believe the judicial supremacist lie, that the courts rule over us, no matter how immoral or unconstitutional their opinions, you have to believe some really unbelievable, ridiculous, and even frightening things.
You have to believe that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednigo were wrong. They should have gone ahead and bowed down to Nebuchadnezzars golden idol.
You have to believe that the Apostles were wrong. They should have shut up about the Gospel of Jesus Christ when they were told by civil authorities to do so. .
You have to believe that the great Roman statesman Cicero was wrong, that there is no universally-applicable natural law which binds all men everywhere, throughout time.
You have to believe that Augustine was wrong when he said that, an unjust law is no law at all.
You have to believe that Thomas Aquinas was wrong when he said that, Human law is law only by virtue of its accordance with right reason; and thus it is manifest that it flows from the eternal law. And in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; in such case it is no law at all, but rather a species of violence.
You have to believe that William Blackstone was wrong when he said, this natural law, being as old as mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, from this original.
You have to believe that Samuel Adams was wrong when he said that, [A]ll men are equally bound by the laws of nature, or to speak more properly, the laws of the Creator.
You have to believe that Alexander Hamilton was wrong when he said that, The Sacred Rights of Mankind...are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power, and that the judiciary... has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.
You have to believe that Thomas Jefferson was wrong when he said that, it is a very dangerous doctrine to consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions. It is one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
You have to believe that all of Americas founders were wrong when they challenged and defeated the supreme civil authority of that old tyrant King George III.
You have to believe that Abraham Lincoln was wrong when, in his first Inaugural Address, he said that, if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers...
You have to believe that Justice Taney should have been obeyed into perpetuity when he pronounced in the infamous Dred Scott opinion that black men were not human beings.
You have to believe that it was fine for a tinpot probate judge to pronounce a literal death sentence by dehydration and starvation on a helpless disabled woman, and that is was acceptable to have the entire legal and political establishment of Florida and of the United States stand passively by as her tormentors tortured her to death by cruel and unusual means.
You have to believe that its just fine that, by judicial decree, and through the passive connivance of a whole generation of American lawyers and politicians, more than fifty-five million defenseless babies have been brutally slaughtered, even though those same politicians swore a sacred oath to God to provide equal protection for the right to life of every person under their jurisdiction
You have to believe that nobody can do a thing when judges, in gross violation of the laws of nature and natures God, and contrary to every single clause of the stated purposes of the Constitution of the United States, invent an imaginary right for a man to marry a man, or for a woman to marry a woman, even though such a perverted thing is physically, naturally, impossible.
You have to believe that our Constitution, and our republican form of government, with its necessary checks and balances, is a dead letter.
You have to believe that the sacred oath of office is nothing more than a formality or a photo op.
Please, quit believing nonsense. Its killing people, and destroying American self-government in liberty.
Tom Hoefling
Which Union areas were allowed to keep slaves as slaves?
Delaware and Kentucky. Maryland and Missouri had ended slavery within their states by state decrees.
Please vs. Ferguson was never reversed or overturned.
Brown v. Board of Education was decided on the basis that “recent psychological research” showed that going to separate schools made Negro children feel inferior to white children, so that separate but equal SCHOOLS could not, by definition (of psychologists) exist.
Brown v. Board did not outlaw segregation as a general principle.
Dude!
Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri. I don’t know about West Virginia.
This is silly and Levin knows better. SCOTUS decisions are not yes/no things. If you read them they are nuanced and complex, and no one familiar with them would ever suggest that state legislatures are in a position to "override".
It isn't that that SCOTUS is the absolute authority, just that their decisions aren't simple or simplistic and it's populist nonsense to say the states should be able to simply override them.
Hmmmm ..?? I don’t think it’s that hard.
I think all the Congress has to do is vote it down.
The branches are CO-EQUAL.
The current House and Senate are too cowardly to do their job; with a few exceptions.
“Which Union areas were allowed to keep slaves as slaves?”
It’s not that they were ‘allowed’- slavery was legal in the United States until the 13th Amendment passed. Individual states could outlaw the practice within their borders, but the national government had to follow the law in order to make slavery illegal on a national basis. Lincoln wasn’t a king who could rule by decree.
The emancipation proclamation was implemented against people whom Lincoln regarded as outlaw American citizens. I guess asset forfeiture is our closest modern equivalent. He regarded the Confederacy as a fiction much like King George regarded colonial claims of independence as fiction.
People posting here who think that civil war is an acceptable method for a politician to change law and custom should think about what they’re saying. It’s basically Obama’s executive orders plus bullets for those who object.
Jurisdiction stripping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia *
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_strippingProxy Highlight
Jurisdiction-stripping, also called court-stripping or curtailment-of-jurisdiction, refers to the congressional practice of, defining the jurisdiction of the United States federal judiciary, by simple majority vote in the House and Senate (and signature of the president)
” In anticipation of the passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution the Wheeling legislature passed a bill ending slavery in West Virginia on Feb. 3, 1865.”
not true
i was just kidding!!! I swear!!
“Has a Supreme Court decision every been overturned?”
Justice Kennedy’s embrace of sodomy as a sacred constitutional right in Lawrence v. Texas (2002) overturned Bowers v. Hardwick (1986). The decisions were directly opposite and Lawrence explicitly overruled Bowers.
The the federal boys and girls in robes decide they are going to re-engineer America’s defective morality to make the Ruling Class feel better about themselves, they never go half way.
LOL ... and that’s for real!
There was no bill forbidding the court to rule on GITMO. If there was then they could be impeached. For that matter the bill could include criminal penalties for the court if they violate it. They’ve never used it, but the power is right there in Article III. The Constitution intended Congress to have the ultimate power, not the courts.
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