Kip's Law Sighting: On the Fallacy of "Judicial Say-So"
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Question: Which radical conservative politician invented the insolent canard of "activist judges"?
Answer: This radical conservative politician:
It's quite simple really: To moral defective politicians, especially those who are obsessed with quashing liberty, an "activist judge" is merely one who rules against you. Political or jurisprudential philosophy has exactly nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, if we had had "a Supreme Court that will enforce the Constitution as written," then FDR would never have been able to put the country in an economic wheelchair for a decade and Congress would never have reinvented itself into a "super-legislature" constantly engaged in the "arbitrary exercise of power."
It is the solemn duty of judges to stand athwart yelling "Stop!" And there is never any truthful, or sane, basis to fear judges more than politicians.
Kip's Law: Every advocate of central planning always -- always -- envisions himself as the central planner.
(Via Dorf on Law.)
Answer: This radical conservative politician:
The Court in addition to the proper use of its judicial functions has improperly set itself up as a third house of the Congress — a super-legislature, as one of the justices has called it — reading into the Constitution words and implications which are not there, and which were never intended to be there.--Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "Fireside Chat," March 9, 1937
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I want — as all Americans want — an independent judiciary as proposed by the framers of the Constitution. That means a Supreme Court that will enforce the Constitution as written, that will refuse to amend the Constitution by the arbitrary exercise of judicial power — in other words by judicial say-so. It does not mean a judiciary so independent that it can deny the existence of facts which are universally recognized.
It's quite simple really: To moral defective politicians, especially those who are obsessed with quashing liberty, an "activist judge" is merely one who rules against you. Political or jurisprudential philosophy has exactly nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, if we had had "a Supreme Court that will enforce the Constitution as written," then FDR would never have been able to put the country in an economic wheelchair for a decade and Congress would never have reinvented itself into a "super-legislature" constantly engaged in the "arbitrary exercise of power."
It is the solemn duty of judges to stand athwart yelling "Stop!" And there is never any truthful, or sane, basis to fear judges more than politicians.
Kip's Law: Every advocate of central planning always -- always -- envisions himself as the central planner.
(Via Dorf on Law.)
Related Posts (on one page):
- Brevity is the Soul of Will
- Kip's Law Sighting: On the Fallacy of "Judicial Say-So"
- Should Post-Bush Democrats "Pack" the Supreme Court?
Posted by Kip on
12 November 2007
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