This week, we have twice seen Supreme Court justices violating their judicial oaths. Yesterday, the justices rewrote Obamacare, yet again, in order to force this failed law on the American people. Today, the Court doubled down with a 5–4 opinion that undermines not just the definition of marriage, but the very foundations of our representative form of government. Both decisions were judicial activism, plain and simple. Both were lawless.
As Justice Scalia put it regarding Obamacare, “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’ . . . We should start calling this law SCOTUSCare.” And as he observed regarding marriage, “Today’s decree says that . . . the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.” Sadly, the political reaction from the leaders of my party is all too predictable. They will pretend to be incensed, and then plan to do absolutely nothing. That is unacceptable. On the substantive front, I have already introduced a constitutional amendment to preserve the authority of elected state legislatures to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and also legislation stripping the federal courts of jurisdiction over legal assaults on marriage. And the 2016 election has now been transformed into a referendum on Obamacare; in 2017, I believe, a Republican president will sign legislation finally repealing that disastrous law. ADVERTISING But there is a broader problem: The Court’s brazen action undermines its very legitimacy. As Justice Scalia powerfully explained,Hubris is sometimes defined as o’erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before the fall. . . . With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them—with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the “reasoned judgment” of a bare majority of this Court—we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence. This must stop.
Liberty is in the balance.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420409/ted-cruz-supreme-court-constitutional-amendment
Most importantly: he proposes making justices subject to retention votes by the people.
> Most importantly: he proposes making justices subject to retention votes by the people.
ReplyDeleteYeah, seeing as direct election of senators by the hoi polloi worked so well.
Heh. A Marxist would say you're suffering from false consciousness, seeing as how Cruz seems to be only good on immigration as long as you're willing to overlook his call to "Immediately increase the H-1B cap by 500 percent from 65,000 to 325,000" (that's a link to and direct quote from his own press release, no over-clever interpretation needed).
ReplyDeleteI consider immigration, albeit not so much of H-1Bs (while technically not an immigrant visa, generally part of the deal with the company is getting a Green Card), as our biggest problem, after the general dismantling of our society as the Supremes have helped along mightily in the last few days, and the outside possibility the Iranians could pull off a 3 warhead EMP attack on CONUS.
As for Cruz's ideas about the Supremes, why not use the explicit Constitutional ability of the Congress and White House to remove areas like gay "marriage" from their remit? Or the inherent ability of the executive, subject to sanctions like impeachment, to ignore such decisions, as Jackson is mis-attributed in saying, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!"?
A recall mechanism won't necessarily undo bad decisions, there's also impeachment for that, and trying to get such a Constitutional amendment passed rather unlikely, to me a sign he's fundamentally unserious about this problem, given the existing remedies he's ignoring.
Urk, I'm an idiot for not reading the NRO item before commenting, Cruz does indeed cover removing this issue from the federal judiciary's remit and impeachment in his list of possible remedies. I suppose the Congress is more likely to pass such an amendment that take action against a particular overweening executive officer or federal judge, but given how convenient they find it to allow the Supremes to take political heat off of them, I still doubt it. But it's the sort of thing that's got to be tried before we reach this point.
ReplyDeleteConservatives have a Supreme Court problem for a very simple reason. Much of the time, conservative is a synonym for "willing to crack down on people who are Not Like Us." When such a conservative becomes a Supreme Court Justice, the people who are Like Us changes from the ordinary citizens to the political activist class and the people who Not Like Us changes from the lower classes to ordinary citizens.
ReplyDeleteIf we want a Justice who stays conservative, it might make more sense to appoint a libertarian ideologue than a typical conservative. It might even make sense to appoint a liberal willing to criticize other liberals.
Libertarian ideologues will never survive the political process for appointment. Conservative has many meanings but Not Like Us is a liberal's misreading.
ReplyDeleteI am coming to the conclusion that Cruz is the only one tough enough to push back the left. There are some others who might hold the line but the ratchet will move again when they leave office. Then there are others who will aid and abet the left (e.g. Christie).
ReplyDelete