Monday, April 11, 2005

Save Democracy, Impeach a Judge

We have a new group in America dedicated to getting the proper rulings out of judges. It is being reported in the Washington Post. There is also a link to the group's www site at the Daily Briefing.

You see they think too many activist judges are coming to the wrong conclusions. Except when they are not activist enough and come to the wrong conclusions. So because of the incoherence of their previous philosophy they have a new name for it:

[Phyllis] Schlafly called for passage of a quartet of bills in Congress that would remove courts' power to review religious displays, the Pledge of Allegiance, same-sex marriage and the Boy Scouts. Her speech brought a subtle change in the argument against the courts from emphasizing "activist" judges -- it was, after all, inaction by federal judges that doomed Schiavo -- to "supremacist" judges. "The Constitution is not what the Supreme Court says it is," Schlafly asserted.
Now these folks have some really good ideas. They want to eliminate the common law from American jurisprudence by eliminating precedent i.e. following previous decisions unless there is error or some very good reason not to follow those decisions. This also means the end of settled law. Now it is very hard to do business in a place where there is no settled law. What are these people thinking?
Farris said he would block judicial power by abolishing the concept of binding judicial precedents, by allowing Congress to vacate court decisions, and by impeaching judges such as Kennedy, who seems to have replaced Justice David H. Souter as the target of conservative ire. "If about 40 of them get impeached, suddenly a lot of these guys would be retiring," he said.
Well my limited understanding of human nature says if they start intimidating judges fewer will retire.

And if they want Congress to be able to vacate Court decisions they are going to have one little problem:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
That would be in Article 1 Section 9 of the US Constitution. What it means is that trying to do an end run around judges is generally frowned upon. I'm sure Ann Althouse could go into much more detail.

Now ordinarily these sorts of folks are screaming that we should follow the Constitution. I guess like the left they allow for one exception: when it doesn't get them the results they want.

via Instapundit.

1 comment:

Hoots said...

Here's a link for you.
I think you'll find it satisfying.
http://nebraska.statepaper.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/04/08/42568f9585c0c

I don't know who Jack Allen and I have never heard of this paper in Nebraska, but the line of thought is sharp as a nail.