Thursday, June 26, 2008

SCOTUS Places Itself in Jeopardy

While I don't always agree with Powerline's thoughts, these guys are fairly high-powered lawyers--thus, at least in appearance, they are supposed to be docile about SCOTUS' opinions.

Not this time.

Whence comes the Court's authority to render the judgment in cases such as Kennedy? It is entirely self-created, based on the Court's ipse dixit. This is not the way it's supposed to work. As Justice Alito writes in dissent, quoting from Justice Kennedy's opinion: "The Court is willing to block the potential emergence of a national consensus in favor of permitting the death penalty for child rape because, in the end, what matters is the Court’s 'own judgment' regarding 'the acceptability of the death penalty.'”

The Court's handiwork in Boumediene represents a more recent and more consequential appropriation of power whose limits have not yet even begun to be tested, and it is one that flies in the face of the Court's own previous jurisprudence. In Boumediene the Court follows along the path it began to blaze in Rasul in 2004.

Our acquiescence in the doctrine of judicial supremacy is of long standing, but it is time to revisit it in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln. In Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Allen Guelzo reminds us that Lincoln "mistrusted the federal judiciary and expected that any emancipation initiatives which came directly from his hand would be struck down in the courts."

Such "acquiescence" is to be expected from attorneys. But the arrogance of the Lefties and Kennedy leaves the Court in a position where they are 'asking for it.'

The outcome has portent. When the citizens percieve that Courts are stuffed with jackasses, (see, e.g., Screechin'Shirley's SCOWI "Mommy, May I" drivel on Wisconsin's 25th Amendment), the citizens may choose to disregard the law.

Or see the prediction of more "multi-shot suicides" here:

We find before us—and perhaps a bit beneath us—a Supreme Court of the United States that in this session has found more sympathy and more previously unknown rights for suspected terrorists and child rapists than it has for the average American.

From Bagram to Baltimore, expect to hear some names and dates begin to be associated with this and similar urban legends.


It is a truism of the human experience that when a people sees their system of justice fail due to inequities in the judicial process, they will find justice on their own.


There are fools, and damn fools. But apparently, Black-Robed fools are the worst of the lot.

No comments: