Tuesday, February 16, 2016

A Word to the Wise About SCOTUS

Grim makes a very important point here.

...Nothing could be clearer than that the Federal courts have become too powerful. Admittedly, this is an old argument for me. I've been arguing it probably since I've been writing here, certainly since 2006 (see "The Judiciary" here). The most important work we could do right now would be to strip the Federal courts, and the Supreme Court, of much of their authority. The Supreme Court's ability to amend the Constitution on the fly has risen at the same time that increasing diversity in the nation has made amending the Constitution legitimately, through Article V, more and more difficult to accomplish.

The Supreme Court has become much like the One Ring. Instead of trying to use that concentrated power to defend our position, we need to destroy the power lest it fall into other hands....


...It is in the interest of nearly every American to disperse this concentrated power, which is a threat to the peace and stability of the Republic. Unfortunately, I suspect the siren song of power -- of finally being able to force the other side to submit and obey -- will prove too strong.

The alternative is a giant bowl of Not Good.

By the way, if you think Grim is not your brand of thinker, how about Abe Lincoln?

...Perhaps the most famous opponent of judicial supremacy in our nation’s history was Abraham Lincoln, who as President directly defied the abominable and inhuman monstrosity that was Chief Justice Taney’s ruling in 1857’s Dred Scott v. Sandford.

"...the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."

Hmmmmmm?

2 comments:

Grim said...

Yes, opposition to Dred Scott as I understand it was the main thing that drove Lincoln into politics. I wonder what Lincoln would have thought of that greatest of the tools of Reconstruction, the 14th Amendment, with its vast shift of power to the Federal courts?

Dad29 said...

As a matter of fact, that decision spurred the organization of the Republican Party, which happened in Wisconsin!

And if the 14th would have shocked his conscience, imagine what the 16th would have done to him...