Ugh: these hearings are absolutely disgusting. A bunch of the senators on the Judicial Committee (although mostly Democrats -- I won't speculate here as to why) are trying to maneuver Roberts into revealing whether or not he supports the policy positions of their constituents, and want to judge whether or not he's a member of the supposed "mainstream".
It's irrelevent! Judgements about whether someone's in the mainstream are judgements about policy decisions. It doesn't matter if a Supreme Court nominee thinks that all Catholics should be drowned at birth; it's just not relevent. Judges have same job as basketball refs: not to judge who wins or loses, but to make sure the rules are followed. This means that a correctly operating Supreme Court justice's decisions may result in injustice if the fix for the injustice is unconstitutional. SCOTUS members aren't there to uphold individual instances of justice, they're there to protect our legal system itself. Correcting particular rights & wrongs is the job of the legislature, which is the reason legislatures are accountable to the voters. This job has nothing to do with the Judicial Branch.
5 comments:
Circuses serve their own purposes...
The stated purpose of the judiciary is to resolve specific disputes in law and equity. The appropriate means of resolving these disputes appears in itself a dispute.
Only by those who think that the Constitution is an 'interpreted' document. Personally, I think that is horseshit. Judges are to rule on a case by the status of current law. If people don't like it, they can lobby their Congresspersons and have the legislature change the law.
Anything else is judicial activism and is why we have these judges running around now like little fief-lords. Judges in the 9th Circuit Court now think they can override the SCOTUS!
WTF!?
Override? On what count?
If you're referring to the Pledge of Allegiance thing, the original suit was overturned on standing, not on substance.
Otherwise, I'm in violent agreement with you.
To deny that the purpose of the judiciary is to resolve specific disputes in law and equity is quite frankly, absurd. The power to hear and determine disputes (i.e. deciding cases) in law and equity is the _very definition_ of judicial power. As for the "in law and equity" part, it is the precise text of Article III, Section 2.
As for interpretation, it is not a faculty unique to those who hold the power to resolve disputes. Legislatures must interpret current law in order to propose new law. Executives must interpret law in order to enforce it. Judges and juries must interpret law in order to decide cases.
We interpret law every time we decide to follow it or not.
That interpretation of law is a faculty of judges cannot be denied. Everyone interprets law; it cannot be helped. In fact, everyone interprets everything. Although it is clearly not law, you the reader are nevertheless interpreting these words as you read them. Keep in mind though that the interpretation you have of these words may not be what my intent was in writing them.
The dispute over _how_ to interpret law so that it may be correctly applied to resolve disputes is at the heart of the debate over the judiciary.
"Activists" generally maintain that in certain cases if the law were strictly applied in every case, without considering the facts unique to that case, an injustice may result. "Restraintists" generally maintain that courts must exercise caution in deciding cases lest the rule of law itself be threatened by excessive judicial discretion. Neither side in this debate can be wholly correct, nor wholly wrong. Instead judges must manage this tension in order to resolve disputes.
This is a fundamentally different argument from the debate over "original intent".
"Strict constructionists" regarding "original intent" argue that all law must be followed to the letter, regardless of the injustice that may result in individual cases. For the strict constructionist, in the letter of law is the soul of justice. On the other hand, "Loose constructionists" tend to believe that the understanding of the meaning of law must be changed to conform with prevailing standards of the body politic, regardless of the actual meaning of the text. For the loose constructionist, justice ultimately cannot be codified.
In this second case, both sides are profoundly mistaken.
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