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As I’ve noted previously, the U.S. Government is a balance of powers, not rule by judges. The legislative branch is trying to take over by ruling that the Constitution means whatever they feel like, whenever they feel like it. The balance of power must be asserted. Serious thought is being put into the correct way to do this. From Phyllis Schlafly:
Congress and the president should not pass the buck to judges in black robes and hide behind their skirts when they make outrageous decisions. Here are some ways Congress can start to restore representative government.
– Congress should withdraw jurisdiction from the federal courts over the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, and the Defense of Marriage Act. Two bills to do this (the Akin Bill and the Hostettler Bill) easily passed the House last fall but were ignored by the Senate, and now it is time to make them law.
– Congress should withdraw jurisdiction over court challenges to the Boy Scouts of America, a federally chartered organization, which the American Civil Liberties Union is currently trying to ban from public schools. The ACLU is seeking activist judges who will rule it a violation of the First Amendment for the Boy Scouts to pledge allegiance to God and country and commit to keeping themselves “morally straight.”
– Congress should repeal the 1976 law that permits activist judges to grant lavish attorney’s fees to the ACLU when it succeeds in banning the Boy Scouts, the Ten Commandments or a cross that has existed on public property for decades.
– Both Houses of Congress should hold hearings about remedies for supremacist decisions. Congress should bring defiant judges before the American people to answer questions about their worst rulings.
#2“Our Constitution’s Framers designed the judicial branch to be the least powerful of the three branches.
Bingo. The Constitution called for a two-thirds majority vote in Congress, followed by approval of three-fourths of the states to amend the Constitution. This was why Alexander Hamilton rightly considered that the judicial branch was the least powerful of the three branches of government.
Today's Court is violating that part of the Constitution, in a huge power grab that opposes the balance of power the Framers designed, and that Hamilton expected and intended.
Quoting from Newt Gingrich's new book, "Winning the Future," Chapter 4:
Over the last fifty years the Supreme Court has become a permanent constitutional convention in which the whims of five appointed lawyers have rewritten the meaning of the Constitution.
...The long, difficult process of amending the Constitution with its requirements for two-thirds majorities in Congress and for three-fourths of the states to concur was designed to make changing the Constitution very difficult. When I was Speaker we tried to get a balanced budget amendment and received the 290 votes necessary in the House but fell two votes short in the Senate. Even if the amendment had received the necessary votes in the Congress we would then have had to go to the states to secure thirty-eight states' ratification.
Yet all this effort is matched by a 5 to 4 vote on the Supreme Court. If five justices decide we cannot say "one nation under God," cannot pray at graduation, and cannot criticize politicians with campaign ads just before an election, then we lose those rights. If they decide that child pornography on the Internet is protected by free speech (unlike prayer and political speech) that becomes the law of the land. This power grab by the Court is a modern phenomenon and a dramatic break from all previous American history.
When a strong majority of the citizens feel that a constitutional ammendment is necessary, history has shown that the "long, difficult process of amending the Consitution" does not need to be long or difficult.
Interpreting vaguely worded law is the job of these justices. All of the things Shlafly recommends are within Congress' power, but I'll bet you a dollar that none of them are going to happen. This idea that we would impeach Supreme Court justices for bad decisions is, I'm sorry to say, a fringe idea. Mainstream America likes the judiciary.
Finally, you didn't see Dems attacking the institution at this level after Bush v. Gore. The right-wing fringe is making a grave error in attacking the very pillars of our society and trying to destroy the institutions that make this country governable at all.
#4When a strong majority of the citizens feel that a constitutional ammendment is necessary, history has shown that the “long, difficult process of amending the Consitution” does not need to be long or difficult.
Exactly. That's why we should use that procedure, rather than letting the Supreme Court justices rewrite the Constitution.
Only in a "i'm making a political speech" sense is the judiciary re-writing the constitution. They are not changing the text of the constitution in any way.
What they are doing is deciding whether (they think that) a spedific policy is connstitutional or not. THAT IS THEIR JOB. They are given lifetime appointments so that they can be independent. If a majority of Americans thinks that their decisions are wrong, the remedy is to amend the constitution to make the will of the people clear. Until you have enough of a majority to do that, leave the judiciary alone to do their job.
#6First of all, I always enjoy discussing things with you, Bellman. I wish more Liberals (if that word may be considered a description of some of your views) could express their views as reasonably.
I will respond by reference to a passage in Newt's book which I quoted a couple of comments up.
If five justices decide we cannot say “one nation under God,” cannot pray at graduation, and cannot criticize politicians with campaign ads just before an election, then we lose those rights. If they decide that child pornography on the Internet is protected by free speech (unlike prayer and political speech) that becomes the law of the land. This power grab by the Court is a modern phenomenon and a dramatic break from all previous American history.
There's just no way the Constitution forbade prayer in school, or said that child pornography on the Internet was protected speech and prayer in school was not. This example shows that the Judges are paying no attention to the Constitution, but are using their position to order Americans around to make us put up with things we don't want to put up with (e.g. child pornography on the Net), and forbid us from doing things we do want to do (like pray in school if we feel like it). It's just a steady chipping away at American freedoms that's bad for all Americans.
Alexander Hamilton wrote:
"This independence of the judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill humors, which the arts of designing men, or the influence of particular conjunctures, sometimes disseminate among the people themselves, and which, though they speedily give place to better information, and more deliberate reflection, have a tendency, in the meantime, to occasion dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community."
"Our Constitution's Framers designed the judicial
branch to be the least powerful of the three branches. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78 that the judiciary 'will always be the least dangerous' branch of government because it has the least capacity to 'annoy or injure' our constitutional rights." Actually, Hamilton said that it was the "least dangerous" because it can't summon the military or write laws.
"[T]hough individual oppression may now and then
proceed from the courts of justice, the general
liberty of the people can never be endangered from
that quarter; I mean so long as the judiciary remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the Executive. For I agree, that 'there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.' And it proves, in the last place, that as liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have every thing to fear from its union with either of the other departments; that as all the effects of such a union must ensue from a dependence of the former on the latter, notwithstanding a nominal and apparent separation; that as, from the natural feebleness of the judiciary, it is in continual jeopardy of being
overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches; and that as nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence as permanency in office, this quality may therefore be justly regarded as an indispensable ingredient in its constitution, and, in a great measure, as the citadel of the public justice and the public security."