Posting’s going to be a little light, because I’m on a semi-vacation this week. But here’s my latest Tech Central Station column. It’s on judges:
The American people treat their court system a little bit like an IQ test: When they get the result they want, the verdict is just; when they don’t like the outcome, the whole thing is suspect.
That’s why Republicans have been saying such stupid things about judges recently.
The Judiciary of the USA is taking advantage of the fact that it can move faster then Congress to grab political power that it was NOT intended to have. The root of this problem is Roe vs Wade and the genocide of 35 million unborn children.
What was the House bill number that made murder legal if the murdered person was under a certain age? What do you mean there was no VOTE on this issue? Surely you can’t be saying that a political action group used the Legal system to circumvent the democratic process? The Judical branch was designed to either yea or ney Laws passed by Congress. It has No business interperting those laws. If the Law makers are not clear enough in making the Law, then the Judiciary neeeds to strike down the law, NOT modify it to meet whatever their current politics are. The best thing that could happen to America is for Congress to Impeach ALL the Justics that have delusions of grandur they express by creating new law thru their rulings on old laws. This will eventually happen. They Dems are fighting in the Last Ditch now. After ‘06 they will not even have that ability. 6 More Senators and the Judges that try to rule thru fiat will join those judges that think American Law should kowtow to Other Nations in retirement, Jail in some cases. Sir you are sadly mistaken in what you seee as both the issue and the solution. If there had been a VOTE on the issue of murdering unborn children and the murderes had won, then the rest of us could have just sucked it up or moved to another country. But sneaking it in thru the back door has a lot of people pissed off. Lynch mob pissed off. Do you really think it’s an accident that all the home grown terrorism has grown out of the issue of Judicial activism? This is the most devisive issue in American politics since the Abolition issue of the mid to late 19th century. If certain groups choose to avoid the democratic proceess by using Judicial activism, then what right do you have to complain when others avoid the Democratatic process and turn to bombs, guns and other means of violence? Why don’t we just solve the problem by VOTING? Put the Murder of unborn children to a vote. Avoid another Civil War.
The judiciary is not independent from the checks and balances that mark our three branches of government.
This is essential, since federal judges are just political appointees with lifetime tenure, nothing more.
They have no constitutional role in making the law, only in making judgements about the law. And that is the way it must stay.
The legislative and executive branches have the right, and indeed the duty, to speak their mind and to balance precieved judicial excess by any constitutional means necessary.
They are elected and represent the people, and American citizens hold them accountable for their actions at the polls.
In turn, these representatives of the people must hold all unelected judicial appointees accountable, lest they become the de facto dictators of our free country.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/504hndlw.asp
Hindrocket is much more eloquent then I am.
The American body politic has moved away from the semi-socialist policies of the 1930’s. The Left CANNOT win elections, so they are using the courts to push their unrealistic and unpopular agenda. This will be THE political issue in 2008. Is America in the 21st century going to be a representative democracy or a state governed by a small unelected body of Jurists?
Ryan,
Your article makes some valid points, but it doesn’t really offer a solution. “…a real examination of nominees’ judicial philosophies” is all well and good, but that’s the problem with lifetime tenure — failure to properly vet a candidate yields a *huge* punishment, in the form of years and years (and, sometimes, years) of bad decisions.
The complaint being raised by the sane right-wingers (yes, there are *some*) is that there’s no check-and-balance setup for the elected officials, who have pretty quick turnaround (2-6 years, tops) to correct a bad choice. The only constitutional means they (and really, we-the-people) have is to strip jurisdiction.
It’s all well and good to make admonishments about screening candidates, but a) can you always tell ahead of time that a particular candidate will be an activist/nutjob?, and b) what happens when one falls through the cracks? That is, what do you do after you’ve finished wagging your finger at the Senate for making a bad choice? How does that actually fix anything?
What the country needs is some way to repair the damage done by objectively bad decisions (see Roe v. Wade, though I won’t rant like the first poster in this thread, or the stupid land-grabs that Tom Sowell complains about where eminent domain is used to grant favors to private corporations) without resorting to riots — and that’s precisely what the Congress aims to do with jurisdiction stripping. If you’ve got a better idea — mind you, a better idea to *fix the problem now* rather than simply prevent it in the future — by all means, let us know.