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To: Vicomte13
"It does not seem to me that the solution lies in trying to somehow find 9 incorruptible men who, once in the position of final arbiter and creator of law in America..."

"Creator of law"?? The Supreme Court's duty is to interpret the law, not to create law. This has been a worsening problem.
946 posted on 06/23/2005 3:09:39 PM PDT by Outland (Some people are damned lucky that I don't have Bill Gates' checkbook.)
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To: Outland

"'Creator of law'?? The Supreme Court's duty is to interpret the law, not to create law. This has been a worsening problem."

You say that is the US Supreme Court's "duty", but when I look at the US Constitution, I do not see language that is clear and says that.

And when I look at the US history, I certainly do not see anything of the sort.

When I look at the Common Law of England, I see that law originally was created by the Courts. Later, Parliament wrote statutes which modified the judge-made law, but certainly conceptually in the Common Law lands, judges are the original source of law.

In the US Constitution, I see that Congress can pass statutes, that the President can issue executive orders and his agencies, regulations. I see that state legislatures can pass statutes, and that state governors can issue executive orders, and their agencies, regulations. I see that city councils can pass ordinances and mayors can issue executive orders. And I see that the police will enforce all of these things, whether they be called "statutes" or "executive orders", "ordinances" or "regulations". I see that you will be deprived of money or liberty if you violate any of these variously titled things.
Therefore, what I see are all laws, by different names which simply identify who issued that particular law.

Then I look at what the courts do in the US, and I see that in the state and in the United States as a whole, courts examine whichever statutes, ordinances, regulations and executive orders they choose to examine, and the courts independently decide which are laws, and which are not. Court decisions put people in jail, impose taxes, and create new rights, such as the right for homosexuals to marry, or the right for women to abort, or the right for states to segregate black people. Court decisions eliminate laws. Court decisions are the most powerful of all laws in America, because they are the only laws that strike down statutes passed by Congress or legislatures, or executive orders of Presidents and governors, and replace them with new laws that suit the thinking of the judges who made these laws.

So, what I see is you and many Americans like you, very sincerely and honorably clinging to an image of what you think the constitutional order OUGHT to be, and what courts OUGHT to do, but disregarding their actual constitutional function and power. The primary source of all of the most disputed and controversed law in America is the Supreme Court of the United States.

Abortion, pornography, sodomy, the reduction of all human activity to a matter of commerce, which the government in general, and the courts in particular, can (therefore) regulate.

The Supreme Court today created the law that in America government can take all real property and re-sell it to a higher bidder so long as it pays a sum that, in the government's estimation, is "fair". No legislature passed such a law. The town in Connecticut that provoked this case did not even pass such a general law. Rather, it had a specific plan affecting some houses. But the Supreme Court of the United States, deciding that particular case, constructed a general principle of law that assigns the decision on private property ownership to the judgment of public officials in every community, however small or large, in America.

You suggest that this is a new problem.
But I recall that the Supreme Court of the United States described slaves as not human under the law, but property, and, on a different theory of property, struck down all Congressional power to regulate private property, thereby unwinding every compromise on slavery that had prevented dissolution of the United States until then.

Back then, the Supreme Court US established the law that slaves were property and property rights are so absolute that government cannot interfere at all.

Today, the Supreme Court of the US established the law that all property rights are relative to the most valuable use of the property in the opinion of the government official deciding the case, and that governments can redistribute property based on their concept of value and utility.

I fail to discern any difference or "worsening" of the problem in America. This has always been a fundamental flaw in the US Constitution. It caused a civil war. It caused segregation. It caused abortion. It is causing enemies of America, terrorists, to be released to go and kill more American soldiers (and people call the French stupid!). And today, it decided that private homes may be reapportioned to other owners based upon the decisions of local officials.
All of this seems quite bad to me, and this line of cases from the past 155 years of US history confirms to me that the problem is not THIS court, or some new departure from a golden past. It seems to me that the US Supreme Court has been doing this nearly since its inception, that Americans have known this, and that Americans believe that the structure itself should be retained, even though they do not seem happy with the way the US justice system works.


964 posted on 06/23/2005 3:42:17 PM PDT by Vicomte13 (Et alors?)
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