Posted on 06/24/2005 1:13:50 PM PDT by Crackingham
Lawyers should speak up and explain the judicial process when judges come under attack, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy told members of the Florida Bar on Friday.
"When judges are attacked unfairly, it's proper for the bar over the course of time, in a professional and elegant way, to explain to the public the meaning of the rule of the law," Kennedy told several hundred lawyers attending the Florida Bar's annual meeting.
In the past year, the judiciary has come under attack from U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who openly criticized the federal courts when they refused to order the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. Delay pointed to Kennedy as an example of Republican members of the Supreme Court who were activist and isolated. Other conservative critics have accused the courts of housing "activist judges," and in Chicago, the husband and mother of a federal judge were found murdered in her home. There's nothing wrong with criticizing cases, Kennedy said.
"We want a debate on what the law does and what it means," he added. "Judges aren't immune from criticism and neither are their decisions."
What is worrisome is when the criticism isn't just focused on a decision but at the judiciary, and increasingly, individual judges, he said. Lawyers can act as an intermediary between the decisions made by judges and the larger society by explaining, he added.
"When the judiciary is under attack, the bar disengaged, the public indifferent and critics scornful, then this idea of judicial independence might be under a real threat," Kennedy said.
Some critics believe that the idea of judicial independence gives judges the ability to rule however they want to, but the opposite is true, Kennedy said.
"Judicial independence is so that a judge can do what he has to do or what she must do," Kennedy said.
Judge Kennedy if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen.
I'm a lawyer, too, and see a duty to support the rule of law by calling for the impeachment of Judges like Kennedy who constantly disrespect the Constitution.
Ditto that. All the sagacity of a small town shyster. Personally, I've had about enough out of these arrogant unelected oligarchs. The Founders never had this high priesthood in mind for the SC-- it is a malignant excrescence of the specious credendum of judicial supremacy.
Probably because most Americans don't know it can happen.
We need an action group to stir up the public and bring pressure to bear on COngress to stop this continuing problem with legislating from the bench.
As Borges states before, we need better judges. But another solution is also needed as there is an endemic problem with the Federal Courts and their continual spinning of new concepts out of the COnstitution which were never intended to be there in the first place.
Merely appointing better judges - and we have seen recently how very difficult that is turning out to be - is a major effort, and even if a good candidate is selected, there must be incredible peer pressure there from the other justices to sign on to this judicial activism.
So how is a Constitutional Amendment allowing a 2/3rds majority of COngress to overturn a Supreme Court decision on the Constitutionality of a law a bill of attainder?
Yep. Kennedy was a Reagan appointee, too. He should be the first one impeached.
I'd like it to be a bigger majority, perhaps 3/4, but I like the idea.
Bump! Screw you Kennedy.
I don't think we can recover from the power grab the judiciary has already carried out. I think it is reminiscent of the nazis in the 1930s. I don't care who is on there, a few personalities aren't going to make a difference in the steamroller that is now the SCOTUS. The Constitution is dead. We are in an interregnum until we can work out a new system of government. That mey take many years.
He should be scared.
Backing off of the doom and gloom of my last post, I have a feeling with this court sometimes that these liberals, like Clinton in his final days, realise they don't have much time left and are stealing everything that isn't nailed down including the Ws off the keyboards before they're carried out of the building.
Good for you. And good luck.
Some individual judges deserve focused criticism. The deserved or not, the expression of same is called democracy. The suggestion that the Guild should try to staunch robust public square debate, from both sides, about whom they find offensive who wear the black robes, is well, a ludicrous suggestion. It is a traducing of the right of the individual to have the liberty to express his or her inner self, spatially and otherwise, in all of the dimensions of same. And no, I the above cadence of New Age words is not original to me. I am plagiarizing them.
This jerkoff isn't fit to shine Robert Bork's shoes.
Impeachment is certainly overdue. This decision is clearly and unquestionably unconstitutional.
Fine, but when it's fair, then the judges should expect some verbal and legal battles.
It's my understanding that society at large hates lawyers more than judges - especially when they talk down to them "explain" the obscene.
Wow. This guy Kennedy has a lot of gall showing his face in public after agreeing in yesterday's 5 - 4 ruling that the government has a Constitutional right to confiscate an innocent citizen's home and hand it over to Burger King, Home Depot, Toll Brothers, or any other developer or big business who may also happen to be a big political campaign contributor.
Hey Kennedy - - have a happy heart attack, you scumbag.
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