Glenn Greenwald actually stumbled onto a pretty telling point: When conservatives put up Supreme Court nominees, those nominees don’t have any problem talking about the conservative agenda of being a strict constructionalist. When liberals put up a nominee, that nominee does everything he or she can to keep from talking about her judicial philosophy. Has any liberal nominee ever actually said, “I’m just going to make stuff up based on what I think is right so we can avoid that whole democracy thing on my pet causes.” That’s what all the liberals judges do, but they know not to say it because all that will do is enrage the average American.
To the average American, they don’t know any other way to treat the Constitution than being a strict constructionalist. It says what it means and that doesn’t change. You don’t act like Nicolas Cage and find some hidden code in the Constitution and say, “It looks like the Founding Father hid gay marriage in here all along!” But liberals know their ideas are hated and they are never going to be able to pass an amendment, so they’ve made this whole bizarro world legal philosophy where black is white, up is down, and there is no individual right to firearms despite the Constitution explicitly saying so. This all seems very smart to them but very moronic to everyone else, and they’re at least conscious enough of that fact to try and seem normal in confirmation hearings.
It’s hard to find people with the humility to just read what’s there in the law and not strive to be that famous judge who made up popular new rights. I really the think the Supreme Court was the least well thought out part of the Constitution. Here’s my suggestion for an extra check and balance: Have that any Justice who is found to have just made stuff up be executed for treason. While maybe we need extra smart people to write all those opinions no one but other law professors read, any idiot can tell when a judge just totally made something up that isn’t anywhere mentioned in the Constitution. And altering the Constitution like that is pretty much treason, so execution. So, judges, make sure you very carefully explain exactly where in the Constitution (and not anywhere else) your opinion came from, and that answer can’t always be “the Commerce Clause.”
Frank, who watches the watchers? I mean, would we need to set up a “Platinum Court” or mebbe a “Ruby Court” to watch the Supreme Court? Mr. Liberal Greenwald points toward a simpler solution. He basically says that liberals know when they are lying about their rationales for verdicts. So, we rig the justices chairs to be lie detectors and blast a justice with 110 if he or she lies. Easy, peasy, Japanesey.
Plus, it’d make court deliberations much more fun to watch.
I like it Burmashave…it would be like watching Pelosi at the state of the union speeches.
Very well written piece, Frank. As usual, the best thing to do is to follow the words of the founders. We should also improve law schools. I have no knowledge of law schools, but with people like Kalgan Blow Me Away, it makes one wonder.
And thank God for that!
I think that extra check and balance you mentioned was implicitly included in the 2nd Ammendment; that is, if the government (or judges) are too oppressive/retarded, the people will grab their guns and execute the lot of them.
Some people would argue that my interpretation of the 2nd Ammendment is completely nonsensical and I just invented a new “right” out of thin air. However, it makes a lot more sense than what they came up with for Roe vs. Wade, so maybe I could be a Supreme Court justice after all.
I say we just have a hunting season for Supreme Court Justices all year round. It will sharpen their wits trying not to get shot, and they’ll have a lot less time for judicial shenanigans when they’re running for their life most of the year.
I like your idea, Burmashave. However, I would add a button so regular folks can zap them as well. They don’t have to have a valid reason to zap ’em, it’s just zapping for the sake of zapping.
“Hey, did you see me zap the living @#$% out of that Kagan? Watch me zap her again!”
I agree that it is ridiculous what some judges come up with, but the Ninth Amendment does say: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
You know, for a group that hates commerce, the communists have grabbed onto the commerce clause like a pitbull to a hotdog. After reading some of the leftists interpretaions of the constitution, I am thouroughly convinced that harvard, yale and princeton are universities for retards. So the law should read if you are a retard, you are ineligible for government office.
She’s a Harriet Myers-esque trojan horse. Of course she won’t make it. It’s just a strategy for tiring us out for the real appointment.
Maybe a 20 year limit on judicial appointments?
Why should any judge be allowed to screw up more than one generation of Americans?
On the other hand, if one particular judge was Not a screw-up, the future POTUS could always re-nominate them for another shift, so we wouldn’t loose the good ones. (Good here being an admittedly Very subjective term.)
No need to send them to “that paradise” just send the treasonous to CUBA where they really want to live anyway.
Just be careful when confronting a liberal judge about rights he’s been making up in the Constitution:
He’ll probably claim to be crazy and the Constitution allows crazy judges to make up new rights, because it’s right there in the ‘Sanity Clause’. Then you’ll yell “THERE IS NO SANITY CLAUSE!!!” and you’ll look like the bad guy for making all those children cry.
I dunno, we can whine about Judges making stuff up but we don’t DO anything about it. Judges aren’t appointed for life. The Constitution says:
“The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior..”
If an Epic Fail at a basic skill like English comprehension doesn’t qualify as behavior sufficient to remove a SCOTUS Justice over what does? We should be making that a voting issue. Ask YOUR Senate candidate if he will promise to introduce articles of Impeachment against every Justice who has failed the test of English literacy.
That should be our litmus test for Kagan. One of ours needs to be questioning her by the script during the hearings and she is droning on saying the usual unparsable BS that Supreme Court nominees do these days and the Senator should take her by suprise by just going Pulp Fiction on her ass. “English Motherf**ker, Do You Speak It?” Throwing down on the bitch with a 9mm while saying it would of course earn bonus points for cool but would probably drown out the importance of the question and really, none of the Judiciary Committee members could possibly hope to pull off a move like that with anything approaching the awesome Samuel L. Jackson managed bring to his character in the film.
But it should be perfectly within the bounds to demand the nominee demonstrate the ability to correctly parse clearly written phrases in English that are certain to come up in her proposed job. Things like, “Tell me Ms. Kagan, what does the phrase “Congress shall make no law…” mean to you?” Or “Ok, you are Dean of Harvard Law, so asking you to expound on the meaning of the 10th Amendment shouldn’t be too much of a challenge, right?”
Obviously we couldn’t have used this tactic on the previous nominee because it would have been so unquestionably racist.