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.
I think that was Sandra ....O
SCOTUS still has power, but, in gutting the Constitution, it has surrendered all moral authority.
Beuhler, Beuhler?
:)
He does sound scared. And there will be more flack next week when they release the Ten Commandments case. It's going to get worse for the judges. I hope they all retire.
We need a Constitutional Amendment allowing a 2/3 rds majority of Congress to overrrule any Supreme Court decision relating the Consitutionality of a law.
Then it will be in Congress' hands to do something about this, and Congress won't want to act unless there is a huge uproar from the public.
Even now, as we communicate, there is barely a whimper. No demonstrations, no mass protests, just the sounds of bleating sheep.
And lawyers should attack judges when they fail in their roles as adjudicators and seize power that goes beyond judging to legislating and inflicting their personal biases, fears and hatreds upon the rest of us. I have heard this "we should get a free pass" argument from abominably stupid county probate judges all the way up to both purportedly conservative and clearly liberal members of the SCOTUS.
No, moronic rulings, perhaps, but they KNOW what they're doing.
McClintock proposed a new amendment to reestablish our private property rights that this scumbag has stolen from us.
What kept me up until 6:30 this morning was the thought:
How can this new amendment be worded any more clearly than the 5th amendment was?
In other words, Kennedy expects the citizens to drink the Hemlock, just as Socrates. The rule of law has no rule over me when it's in error. I have no duty to the State or God to obey an unjust law.
What he should really be doing is telling the general public what they must do to get rid of bad judges. In fact, that should be the only topic any of these drudges on the USSC should be allowed to talk about in public.
That's like asking the dealers to defend the merits of crack.
Translation = "I want my lawyer!!"
What a buffoon!
Hey, Mr. Kennedy -- it doesn't take a professional engineer to look at a crumbled pile of steel and concrete and realize that the damn building wasn't properly designed, and it sure as hell doesn't take a lawyer to look at the crap emanating from your feeble mind to realize that you have no f#&%ing business serving on the U.S. Supreme Court.
At this point, the judiciary should be under relentless attack and noone should be defending them. Kennedy bears no small share of the blame for the sad state of the judiciary.
It's pitiful that our Executive is so weak that he hasn't tossed these people in a dungeon somewhere by now.
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