FYI, Congress is not "the governed" - you and I and the rest of the citizens are. If the governed in this country had an effective check on judicial arrogance, either Roe would not have happened or it would have been substantially modified as the majority do support limited regulation of abortion and a substantial majority oppose it as a form of birth control. In 1973, opinion was even more sharply against abortion.
Or perhaps you'd prefer a more recent opinion. Let's talk Kelo. Do you doubt that the great majority abhor the concept of government condemning residential areas to line the pockets of fat cat developers? Now, I happen to think that, as a matter of law and precedent, the court had Kelo right. The dissent didn't even make an argument based on law. O'Connor's lament about the decision working to the benefit of the powerful was laughable - the same can be said about *any* government action, shall we prohibit them all?
But I also admit I am very much in the minority. Tell me what effective checks the majority have been able to employ against Kelo.
Also, try to learn what non sequitur means. My argument may be wrong (i.e. the Constitution may, unbeknownst to me, have effective checks on the courts), but being wrong doesn't make it a non sequitur. You posts, on the other hand, are non sequiturs because I was discussing effective checks but you wrote instead about lack of enforcement powers, lack of Congressional concern etc.
In fact, it is curious you don't see that your points support my argument. I'd say it is clear that the court's lack of enforcement power can never be an effective check. We rightfully cherish the rule of law. For the Congress and Executive to arbitrarily ignore court rulings would be a disaster.
We live in a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Government powers are distributed horizontally between legislative, executive and judicial federal branches and vertically between the federal and state levels.
My argument may be wrong (i.e. the Constitution may, unbeknownst to me, have effective checks on the courts),
The significant applicable clause has come up many, many times at FR: "The supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." (Art. III, Sec. 2) Like every other power, this may be used for good or evil.
Congress may:
1) Create new avenues for judicial review, as happened during the recent Terry Schiavo case.
2) Remove entire subjects from judicial review. Significant examples include the post-Civil War reconstruction acts (see ex parte Milligan, 1869), the Clinton-Gingrich anti-terror laws passed in 1995 in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, most recently the so-called Patriot Acts (protecting the "National Security Letter" language, basically an end-run around the Fourth Amendment stricture against Writs of Assistance).
I have to agree with Alberta's Child and ditto on this one.
Non sequitur is the Latin for the term "does not follow." An argument is considered a "non sequitur" if the conclusion does not logically follow from the posted premise. I've made the case that your argument was a non sequitur not because it was wrong, but because the conclusion had no basis in the premise you posted (i.e., Congress hasn't overruled the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, so therefore Congress has no authority over the Supreme Court).
I'd say it is clear that the court's lack of enforcement power can never be an effective check. We rightfully cherish the rule of law. For the Congress and Executive to arbitrarily ignore court rulings would be a disaster.
There was an interesting "separation of church and state" case that played out in the Federal courts about 15-20 years ago, in which a public high school student in a southern state (I think it was Alabama) filed suit against his school to keep a Baptist minister from leading the students and fans in prayer before every home football game. The Federal court determined that the minister's actions amounted to an unconstitutional establishment of religion on the part of the school. The case got a lot of attention at the time as one of those landmark "free exercise" cases in the Federal courts, and the ruling was immediately appealed. The appellate court upheld the decision, and the minister was ordered to cease and desist immediately.
The minister and school district considered additional action in the Federal courts, but the matter was really taking a financial toll on all of the people involved. So they pretty much decided to ignore the Federal court ruling and go on as if nothing had ever happened. The minister publicly announced that he was going to get on the stadium P.A. system before every football game and lead the student body and fans in prayer -- and if the Federal courts had a problem with it they should just come on down to Alabama the following Saturday and have him arrested.
He basically told the Federal courts to "f#ck off." And "f#ck off" they did, since he's apparently continued leading his prayers to this day. The student who filed the suit in the first place was probably a strident, snot-nosed undergraduate in the sociology department at Berkeley or Harvard by the time the appeals were exhausted anyway, so who the hell even cared by that point.
This was not an "arbitrary" decision to ignore a court ruling, either. This was nothing more than ordinary people telling the Federal courts to leave them alone.