New Justices Provide Glimpse of Future Reshaping of the Court
Published Mon, Nov 20 2006 11:33 PM
Technorati Tags: Democrats, Courts
From the Washington Post:
The two newest Supreme Court justices took off the robes and took to the stump last week, providing glimpses of the fresh personalities that will reshape a court that had remained constant for more than a decade.
It's a court that is in need of reshaping too. Altogether too many of the court's opinions over the years have been full of so many shades of gray that there is almost no contrast in the picture. Too many new "rights" that were never written into the Constitution or its amendments have been created by the court. U.S. law has become muddled with the fuzzy thinking of foreign courts that were ruling on issues that had nothing to do with U.S. law as written.
Still, the concept of "reshaping" the courts is a troublesome one. If the court has stuck to its role of interpreting the law rather than making law it wouldn't need reshaping. If every pet cause of the left, and even of the right, had not been brought before the courts as a way to get law enacted that politicians accountable to the voters wouldn't dare enact, the court wouldn't need reshaping.
If the Legislative branch of our government had taken its responsibilities to interpret and obey the Constitution a bit more seriously it wouldn't have been up to the courts to decide that the first amendment only applies to major media outlets and "527" groups near an election. If the executive branch had taken the oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" a bit more seriously and faithfully executed it, it wouldn't have been up to the court to declare the first amendment dead (or is that a "living document" subject to the whims and mores of the present). This is something that both Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito understand.
On the Senate campaign trail this fall, the formula that many Democratic candidates used to show they would be judicious but not recalcitrant when it came to Supreme Court nominees was that they would have voted for Roberts but not for Alito.
Whether there will be that much difference between the two men in their judicial philosophies will be played out over the years.
Both, though, had similar messages last week. Alito said that "all public servants, not just judicial officers, play a role in shaping our law, interpreting our Constitution" and that it is wrong for "any public officials to ignore questions about the bounds of their authority in our constitutional system and simply say that the courts will sort that out for them."
Roberts said nearly the same thing. "The great gift of the founding generation was the right of self-government," he said. "We shouldn't give it up so easily to think that all the important issues are going to be decided by the Supreme Court.
Of course the Democrats weren't interested in letting anyone but the courts decide the important issues. Especially as long as the courts continued to erode the plain meaning of the words of the Constitution and its amendments in favor of foreign jurisprudence. The sophistry exhibited by the Democrats on the campaign trail makes that clear.
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Douglas V. Gibbs responded with:
 | As the line between right and wrong blurs the left and the politically correct crowd are determined to regulate and control the blur with judges that refuse to recognize the original intention of the Constitution and resist the temptations of common sense. |
Perri Nelson responded with:
 | It's sad but true. That's just one of many reasons why elections matter. With this last election in the books, I'm afraid a lot of good judges are going to get passed over as the new majority on the Senate Judicial Committee refuses to bring nominations to the floor. |
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