Posted on 04/22/2005 6:17:01 AM PDT by JBW
Really? So he "represents" people who have no opportunity to vote for or against him? Sounds like the very definition of "unelected tyrant" that the anti-judge mob rails against.
It really is a very, very simple issue - perhaps too simple for most to understand. The very nature of the role of a judge requires that judicial decisions not be driven by popular will. Were it otherwise, there would be no need to have judges at all.
With respect to your broader point that the other branches of gov't sometimes make mistakes. Yes, that is correct. The other branches make mistakes, sometimes horrible ones. But when they do, the people residing in those branches can be voted out of office. That doesn't happen though with Supreme Court justices. When they make a mistake, it is for life.
Can I assume from this statement that you contend he doesn't?
I have never seen an Internet address listed as a reference in a legal dictate from the court. Have you? Please cite the case!
Delay is doing more harm than good here in that he is looking for revenge rather than reason. The proper approach to the problem of the out of control judiciary is to seek to make the Judicial Branch co-equal with the other branches of government, as it once was.
Actually, they held that the Constitution did not bar state legislatures and executives from decreeing that blacks in their states were slaves - care to point me to the provision that said otherwise at the time? Or did you want the court to make one up?
"Likewise there was no basis in the 14th Amendment for the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson that 'separate but equal' passed Constitutional muster."
I'm sure you realize this - at least, I would think you would - but the Plessy decision prevented state legislatives and executives from creating 'separate but unequal' systems. So your argument is that the court should have ruled that the Constitution prevented state governments from creating separate systems, equal or otherwise - as they did in Brown. Most who rail against 'judicial activism' consider Brown to be the activist decision - glad to see you disagree.
"In Korematsu, there was literally no basis for the Court's conclusion that it was Constitutionally acceptable to hold thousands of citizens in dentention simply because they were of Japanese ancestry."
So, the executive does not have the power to detain persons without charging them and giving them due process simply because it believes they might pose a threat to national security. Glad to see you agree with the Court in the recent Gitmo cases and the Padilla case. Seems like the Court lately is doing things exactly the way you would like.
Every case cited in any footnote is available on the internet.
What I don't understand is why the Republicans haven't done a better job presenting to the public who the Dems are blocking. Does anyone remember the interrogation of Judge Pryor as to why he and his wife avoided "gay days" at Disney World when taking their young children on vacation. I think that more pressure could be applied to Senators Pryor and Lincoln. Such pressure would expose their coziness with the liberals that they are so adept at hiding on the stump in Arkansas.
Krauthammer writes, "DeLay is wrong about the Schiavo case. I think the law was a bad law, but the trial judge applied it properly. I think the judge assessed the medical evidence incorrectly, but that is a matter of interpretation, not of judicial impropriety or denial of due process. There is nothing here with which to threaten this judge or the judicial system."
I don't get all of this gushing about Krauthammer. I've never like the guy. He has always generally tilted left in most matters, excepting the War. He's got some sort of bulls**t reputation of being a rightist simply because the MSM papers who buy his stuff wouldn't know a true rightist if he bit 'em in the ass. And this article, with the above quote, proves my point. There is no way any right-thinking person would slough off an outright tortuous murder committed by a fundamentally corrupt judicial system and its tyrannical cadres of out-of-control lawyers who blithely disregarded the numerous statutes passed by legislatures at the state and federal levels written specifically to aid Terri Schiavo by blaming the atrocity on a poor reading of the law by "incompetent" "judges". At bottom, Krauthammer is an idiot!
You said it very well my friend..
Oh, by the way, get ready to be labeled a RINO.
Also, it you care to point to anything - ANYTHING AT ALL - in the Roper decision that isn't cited or footnoted as you feel it should be, feel free. I don't think you are going to find anything. Oh, heck - let's make it easier - can you point to anything in any SCOTUS opinion written by Kennedy that isn't cited or footnoted as you think it should be?
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) ... he suggested a connection between "some recent episodes of courthouse violence" and judicial activism -- as if courtroom gunmen are disappointed scholars who kill in the name of Borkian originalism.Krauthammer: Have that independence and supremacy been abused? Grossly. What other advanced democracy would radically legalize abortion by judicial decree rather than by democratic will expressed through legislatures or referendums? What sane democracy allows four unelected robed eminences in Massachusetts to revolutionize the very definition of marriage....
This is not just deeply undemocratic. It is politically crazy. Democracies work as stable social entities because when people are allowed to settle issues themselves by debate and ballot, they are infinitely more likely to accept the results when they lose. To deny them that participation is to risk instability and threaten social peace.
Krauthammer criticizes Cornyn for suggesting social unrest might be directed at judges for their unconstitutional rulings, and THEN further in the article Krauthammer says that judicial short-circuiting of constitutional legislative process will "risk instability and threaten social peace!
Exactly the same thing Cornyn said.....someone needs to let Krauthammer know that he contradicted himself and owes Cornyn an apology. He also owes Cornyn accolades for realizing before Krauthammer what Krauthammer himself eventually figured out. (Although, apparently he didn't think too deeply about the implications of what he was saying.)
Down with the Judicial Oligarchy.
Up with the Peoples Legislature controlling these black-robed dictators!
The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement [people of Aftican ancestry] compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.
With respect to Plessy v. Ferguson, the 14th Amendment required blacks to be treated equally, not 'separately, but equally. To rule otherwise, was to turn a blind eye to the 14th Amendment, but I will let Justice Harlan's dissent speak for itself on this issue:
n my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott Case.
It was adjudged in that case that the descendants of Africans who were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, were not included nor intended to be included under the word 'citizens' in the constitution, and could not claim any of the rights and privileges which that instrument provided for and secured to citizens of the United States; that, at time of the adoption of the constitution, they were 'considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant [163 U.S. 537, 560] race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them.' 17 How. 393, 404. The recent amendments of the constitution, it was supposed, had eradicated these principles from our institutions. But it seems that we have yet, in some of the states, a dominant race,-a superior class of citizens,-which assumes to regulate the enjoyment of civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race. The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the constitution, by one of which the blacks of this country were made citizens of the United States and of the states in which they respectively reside, and whose privileges and immunities, as citizens, the states are forbidden to abridge.
With respect to Korematsu, I think you are being ridiculous in comparing the detention of Jose Padilla who is an avowed member of Al Qaeda to the mass detention of American citizens after the start of World War II. As a result, I don't think much argument is merited on the issue.
I really liked this piece.
I find it most interesting that a 'conservative' has apparently not stopped to consider how they 'know' this particular fact.
Of course, if it troubles you not to simply take the government's word for what any citizen may or may not have done, without benefit of any kind of judicial process, your hostility towards our judicial system becomes more understandable.
Are you a lawyer?
Why do you ask?
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