Posted on 10/18/2004 6:46:31 PM PDT by Graybeard58
More than ever, the nation's judiciary is expanding its authority, exercising powers far beyond those established in the historic Marbury vs. Madison case that marked the first time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a congressional enactment unconstitutional.
That 1803 decision was celebrated for putting the Supreme Court on equal footing with the executive and legislative branches of government. It did so by claiming the court's right to declare a statute invalid if it violated the Constitution. Thus the power of judicial review came into being.
Today, this power has been broadened to interpret a statute not only by the specific dictates in the Constitution, but by what may be implied in its wording. From objective judicial analysis, laws are now targets of subjective judicial judgment -- with all the biases that may entail.
The most recent example of judicial overreach is the ruling by District Judge William Morvant of Baton Rouge, La., throwing out a constitutional amendment adopted by the legislature and approved by 78 percent of the voters in a referendum.
The quickness of the judge's invalidation was amazing. It came less than three weeks after the people had spoken.
The main basis for Judge Morvant's decision evidently is a state law that bars a referendum on a measure that has more than one purpose. In his mind, a ban on same-sex marriages and a ban on civil unions are different issues; therefore, the entire amendment was invalid.
Most would disagree. As explained by an attorney in support of the amendment, the singular intent was to safeguard marriage from legal recognition of all other forms of commitment that did not involve one man and one woman.
Judge Morvant might have pondered the issue more deeply before discarding the wishes of the legislature and a large majority of voters. Certainly, the amendment process deserves more respect than he accorded it when he voided it on a highly questionable technical point.
Sounds like a good ad to me.
i agree 100% . a concerted effort MUST be made to eliminate
these activist judges. they are part of the "enemy within"
At some point some legislature somewhere will just have to ignore one of these rulings and dare the court to do something about it. Until then these tyrants will just get bolder and bolder.
If a judge is impeached, under what cases are his rulings still binding?
The thing that bothers me most about judicial review is that it was a self-given power. Nevertheless, with proper judicial restraint and with the other checks and balances like limiting jurisdiction and, yes, even amending the Constitution, it shouldn't destroy our governmental balance of power. But the judges refuse to restain themselves to ruling according to Constitutional intent. Law is arbitrary in America. It all depends on what any given judge decides it to mean in that given district on that given day. And according to liberals, the people have no recourse. They just have to live with it.
I wonder what the chances are this judge, who clearly suffers from a king-complex, will be overturned on appeal.
It should be a wake-up call to all people in conservative states. It isn't just places like Vermont and Mass with these awful judges, they hold office everywhere. It makes gubernatorial races and judicial races that much more important.
We need Andrew Jackson, the only POTUS to my knowledge that told the SCOTUS to pound sand and totally disobeyed their ruling.
Help me out here. I'm not being sarcastic either but are you referring to when Andrew Jackson forced the indians in Georgia to accept nine cents an acre for their land and then charged them for the privilege of being sent on a forced march that cost the Indians about half the lives of the people involved?
It's my memory of history that the Indians pursued their cause through the court system all the way to the Supreme Court, which agreed with them that they could not be forced from their land, at which point Andrew Jackson in effect said, screw the Supreme Court and did it any way.
I am not a historian by any means and may be wrong on the details and upon rereading this post it looks sarcastic and accusatory but I assure you it isn't meant to be that way at all.
This is absolutely the #1 domestic issue facing America this election, and for some reason it is totally under the radar. The control over the apoitment of Federal and SCOTUS justices over the next 4 years will determine how our Ameican society thrives over the next 25 years.
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.
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