It's Not Only the Communists That Say Stupid Things
We baby-seal clubbers are capable of it also.
The No. 2 Republican in the House has openly criticized the federal courts since they refused to order the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.
He pointed to Kennedy as an example of Republican members of the Supreme Court who were activists and isolated.
"Absolutely. We've got Justice Kennedy writing decisions based upon international law, not the Constitution of the United States? That's just outrageous," DeLay told Fox News Radio.
I happen to be in agreement here. Unless a Justice is citing a pre-Revolutionary British decision, I am a firm believer that the U.S. Constitution, and decisions made by judges under the U.S. Constitution, should be the basis for Federal court decisions. To make a decision based upon international law would be like...uh...making a decision based upon Exodus.
Well, Tom DeLay went on:
"And not only that, but he said in session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly outrageous."
Sorry, but I've lost his logic here. It's one thing for a jury to only base its decisions based upon the facts presented in the courtroom. It's another thing entirely for an appeals court justice, charged with reviewing the Constitutionality of a decision, to perform research using available media - law books, web sites, telephone 900 number party lines, what have you.
As of right now, neither Tom DeLay's news page nor the Fox News article nor Daily Delay give no further explanation of his position on Internet research. Perhaps someone knowledgeable could explain.
Comments
Just because it isn't American in origin doesn't make it bad, and there are a lot of legal systems in place that have been around a lot longer than yours (or mine for that matter).
Re: the internet statement, yep, incomprehensible. Heaven forbid that a judge do his own research. Food for thought.
Note that I'm speaking of the absolute issue here, and I'm not delving into situations where a judge says "My decision is based on the second comma of the first sentence of the Third Amendment." At least in this case the judge is citing a Constitutional source for his/her decision.
I don't know all the details so I'm sure I'm way over my head on this.
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Policy Analysis no. 446 August 6, 2002
How Constitutional Corruption Has Led to Ideological Litmus Tests for Judicial Nominees
by Roger Pilon
Roger Pilon is vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute. He holds Cato's B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies and is the director of Cato's Center for Constitutional Studies.
Executive Summary
The 2000 presidential election was widely understood to be a battle for the courts. When George W. Bush finally won, following the Supreme Court's split decision in Bush v. Gore, many Democratic activists simply dug in their heels, vowing to frustrate Bush's efforts to fill vacancies on the federal courts. After Democrats took control of the Senate in May of 2001, they began calling explicitly for ideological litmus tests for judicial nominees. And they started a confirmation stall, especially for circuit court nominees, that continues to this day. Thus, 8 of Bush's first 11 circuit court nominees went for over a year without even a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and most have still not come before the committee.
As the backlog of nominees grows, Democrats are quite explicit about the politics of the matter: their aim is to keep "highly credentialed, conservative ideologues" from the bench. The rationales they offer contend that judges today are, and perhaps should be, "setting national policy." One such "policy" they abhor is "the Supreme Court's recent 5--4 decisions that constrain congressional power." Thus the importance, they say, of placing "sympathetic judges" on the bench, judges who share "the core values held by most of our country's citizens." In a word, everything is politics, nothing is law.
The battle between politics and law takes place at many points in the American system of government, but in recent years it has become especially intense over judicial nominations. That is because judges today set national policy far more than they used to--and far more than the Constitution contemplates. Because the original constitutional design has been corrupted, especially as it relates to the constraints the Constitution places on politics, we have come to ideological litmus tests for judges. The New Deal Court, following President Roosevelt's notorious Court-packing threat, politicized the Constitution, laying the foundation for several forms of judicial activism. After that it was only a matter of time until the judiciary itself had to be politicized. We are reaping the fruit of that constitutional corruption.
That will not change until we come to grips with the first principles of the matter--with the true foundations of our constitutional system. Yet neither party today seems willing to do that. Democrats have an activist agenda that a politicized Constitution well serves. Republicans have their own agenda and their own reasons for avoiding the basic issues. Thus, it may fall to the nominees themselves to take a stand for law over politics, the better to restore the Constitution and the rule of law it was meant to secure.
Full Text of Policy Analysis no. 446 (PDF, 224 KB)