Tuesday, April 05, 2005

If the Judge decides against you, is he or she an Activist?

What is up with the reichwing "Activist" label for judges that decide against them?

Is it bad to be an Activist?

If so, what do you call some one who shoots and kills a clinic doctor in the name of the "right-to-life?"

Slice from the NYTimes:

Last week, Judge Stanley Birch Jr., a conservative member of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, declared that in the Schiavo case, "the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our founding fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people - our Constitution."Judge

Birch is right, but he should not be such a lonely voice. The founders established a system of government in which the three branches - legislative, executive and judicial - act as checks and balances for one another. Republicans in Congress and the Bush administration, unhappy with some rulings of the judiciary, are trying to write it out of its constitutional role. The courts will not always be popular; they will not even always be right. But if Congress succeeds in curtailing the judiciary's ability to act as a check on the other two branches, the nation will be far less free.

1 comment:

Ken Grandlund said...

the danger is even more pronounced when the culture begins to agree with the sentiment that judges are subordinate to popular whim as this belief will be passed through our legal schools and into the minds of future judges who will believe that they exist as nothing more than a rubber stamp.

kangaroo courts is the usa? with this bunch sterring the ship, anything is possible.