[baltimoreman]

O'Connor: U.S. must rely on foreign law
Justice says, 'The impressions we create in this world are important'






American courts need to pay more attention to international legal decisions to help create a more favorable impression abroad, said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at an awards dinner in Atlanta.


Sandra Day O'Connor

"The impressions we create in this world are important, and they can leave their mark," O'Connor said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The 73-year-old justice and some of her high court colleagues have made similar appeals to foreign law, not only in speeches and interviews, but in some of their legal opinions. Her most recent public remarks came at a dinner Tuesday sponsored by the Atlanta-based Southern Center for International Studies.

The occasion was the center's presentation to her of its World Justice Award.

O'Connor told the audience, according to the Atlanta paper, the U.S. judicial system generally gives a favorable impression worldwide, "but when it comes to the impression created by the treatment of foreign and international law and the United States court, the jury is still out."

She cited two recent Supreme Court cases that illustrate the increased willingness of U.S. courts to take international law into account in its decisions.

In 2002, she said, the high court regarded world opinion when it ruled executing the mentally retarded to be unconstitutional.

American diplomats, O'Connor added, filed a court brief in that case about the difficulties their foreign missions faced because of U.S. death penalty practices.

More recently, the Supreme Court relied partly on European Court decisions in its decision to overturn the Texas anti-sodomy law.

"I suspect," O'Connor said, according to the Atlanta daily, "that over time we will rely increasingly, or take notice at least increasingly, on international and foreign courts in examining domestic issues."

Doing so, she added, "may not only enrich our own country's decisions, I think it may create that all important good impression."

In July, O'Connor made a rare television news show appearance with Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer in which they were asked whether the U.S. Constitution, the oldest governing document in use in the world today, will continue to be relevant in an age of globalism.

Speaking with ABC News' "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos, Breyer took issue with Justice Antonin Scalia, who, in a dissent in the Texas sodomy ruling, contended the views of foreign jurists are irrelevant under the U.S. Constitution.

Breyer had held that a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that homosexuals had a fundamental right to privacy in their sexual behavior showed the Supreme Court's earlier decision to the contrary was unfounded in the Western tradition.

"We see all the time, Justice O'Connor and I, and the others, how the world really – it's trite but it's true – is growing together," Breyer said. "Through commerce, through globalization, through the spread of democratic institutions, through immigration to America, it's becoming more and more one world of many different kinds of people. And how they're going to live together across the world will be the challenge, and whether our Constitution and how it fits into the governing documents of other nations, I think will be a challenge for the next generations."

In his dissent in the Texas case, Scalia said: "The court's discussion of these foreign views (ignoring, of course, the many countries that have retained criminal prohibitions on sodomy) is ... meaningless dicta. Dangerous dicta, however, since this court ... should not impose foreign moods, fads, or fashions on Americans," he said quoting the 2002 Foster v. Florida case.

Scalia's scathing critique of the 6-3 sodomy ruling was unusual in its bluntness.

"Today's opinion is the product of a court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct," he wrote. Later he concluded: "This court has taken sides in the culture war."

The current court is split between Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas and Scalia, who tend to hold the traditional constitutionalist approach to rulings, and the majority of O'Connor, Breyer, Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginzburg, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens, who tend to believe in the concept of a "living Constitution" subject to changes in public opinion and interpretation.

[DefCon]

"...The Denver court gave McLeod joint custody of Clark's adopted daughter, Emma, even though McLeod had no legal relationship to the girl...."
- - -
So if I have a child and I am dating a girl, and then we break up,
the courts can grant my ex-girlfriend joint custody of my child?
How bizarre, how bizarre.

[Restorer]

"Impeachment is a last resort for cases of gross wrongdoing or clear unfitness of character," Andrews said, according to the AP. "It should not be used to settle policy differences, even something as highly charged as this case."

WRONG!

IMNTBHO, a judge who misuses his position to enforce his own personal views on those who come before him is guilty of the ultimate in "gross wrongdoing and clear unfitness of character."

If he is a thief, a pedophile or a murderer, these crimes do not necessarily make his judicial decisions wrong (although I wouldn't want such a man as a judge).

I think one of the biggest mistakes in American history has been the failure to use impeachment as the Founders intended, as the ultimate control of the legislative over the executive and judicial branches. This allows the chickens**t congresscritters to pass the buck to judges, who do the dirty work of liberalism because they are untouchable.

But they are only untouchable because Congress refuses to exercised its constitutional power.

[arichtaxpayer]

[visualops]

Everyone across the country should be appalled and horrified at this decision.
The liberals who are always crying over "civil liberties" and "rights" are the ones surely and not so slowly abdicating both our rights and liberties to the judicial oligarchy.

[thiscouldbemoreconfusing]

Republican state Rep. Greg Brophy introduced a resolution yesterday to begin impeachment proceedings against Denver District Judge John Coughlin.

The country could use a lot more politicians like Representative Brophy!

[writer33]

"Responding to "judicial activism," a Colorado lawmaker wants to impeach a judge who ordered a former lesbian in a child custody case not to teach her daughter homosexual behavior is wrong."


This is just getting more and more stupid. I do believe it's high time we set some examples.

[Old Sarge]

I read the thread, and the comments therein, and I conclude:

1. The judiciary is a lifetime appointment, for time and eternity;

2. When World Socialism realized they couldn't win in the ballot box, they decided the road to victory ran through the jurors' box;

3. I am becoming increasingly convinced that, barring an insurrection, there will be no change. The American people willfully close their eyes to the encroachment.

[calcowgirl]

Colorado lawmaker wants to impeach a judge who ordered a former lesbian in a child custody case not to teach her daughter homosexual behavior is wrong.

Unbelievable.

[DMZFrank]

Impeachment, nullification, interposition, and the use of Article III, Sec. 2 of the Constitution all need to be considered.

We need to hold these officials accountable through impeachment, recall, nullification, interposition and arrest where necessary.

I am so seek of this endless deference to judicial tyranny.

When oh when will some elected executive officer in some state or federal capacity, in fulfilling his constitutional duty to honestly interpet the constitution (federal or state) just disregard the unconstitutional rulings of any court and dare the legislature to impeach him for it? When will some legislature impeach just ONE judge for an unconstitutional ruling?

To say that the courts have the final word on the constitutionality of a law NO MATTER WHAT THEY RULE is to say that the system of checks and balances envisioned by the founders does not exist any more.

Alan Keyes gave the best summation of this issue that I've heard yet. He said that every branch of government has a duty to honestly interpret the constitution. If the president honestly feels the courts make an unconstitutional and lawless ruling, then the president should disregard that ruling and refuse to enforce the provisions that he felt were blatantly unconstitutional. If the Congress felt the president was wrong in this decision, then it was their duty to impeach him for it. If the electorate felt that the Congress was wrong for impeaching the president or the failure to impeach him, they can remove them at the next election, as well as the president for any presidential actions that they considered wrongful. Congress can and should impeach federal judges for blatently unconstitutional rulings that manufacture law.

Lest anyone consider this formula has a recipe for chaos, then I submit to you there is no chaos worse than an unchecked oligarchic Judiciary. We are not living under the rule of law when judges make law up to suit their whims has they engage in objective based adjudication.

[little jeremiah]

Homosexual Agenda Ping + Judicial Activism and why it will ruin our country completely unless it is stopped Alert.

Some very good comments on this thread, and another article posted about SCOTUS Justice O'Connor who desperately needs to retire and let someone better fill her spot. (She's not the only one who needs to retire, though.)

Let me know if anyone wants on/off this pinglist.

[EdReform]

Bump

What We Can Do To Help Defeat the "Gay" Agenda
( www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1076476/posts )

Homosexual Agenda: Categorical Index of Links (Version 1.1)
( www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1026551/posts )

Culture of Vice
( www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/977884/posts )