BF2S Forums i am going to end up exploding this week because of sotomayor

Kmarion wrote:

I don't get how someone with a permanent life long position is capable of "legislating" .. from the bench or otherwise. There a real and important reason that or true legislature has to answer to voters. If you don't see the danger in someone making rules without accountability it's hopeless.

If you don't see the necessity of Brown vs. the Board of Education's precedent, then hopeless would seem most appropriate.

Kmarion wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

Kmarion wrote:

I don't get how someone with a permanent life long position is capable of "legislating" .. from the bench or otherwise. There a real and important reason that or true legislature has to answer to voters. If you don't see the danger in someone making rules without accountability it's hopeless.

If you don't see the necessity of Brown vs. the Board of Education's precedent, then hopeless would seem most appropriate.

I presumed you would jump to one of the most extreme example. The Supreme court simply held up the 14 amendment in that case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause
That is all.

That is not your everyday typical case.. nor is it a valid point for handing INDEFINITE POWER over to any branch of government.

But it's not indefinite power anyway.

Unless the Court is heavily composed of Justices that lean one way or another, most rulings are a toss up.  Currently, Anthony Kennedy ends up being the tiebreaker nowadays.

Sotomayor is replacing a liberal Justice, so the balance of power remains.

Kmarion wrote:

I'm talking on a personal level. The idea and the reasons for having them restricted to the roles they are supposed to do (no matter which way they lean) is the thought here. You are setting yourself up for potential catastrophe. You've made it clear that you think term limits should be extended also for congressmen. This obsessions with consolidating power is disturbing.

If it's any consolation, I believe Justices should have terms, not life appointments.

A rotating set of terms of 9 years would allow one Justice to be appointed each year, and this would keep perspectives in the Court up to date.

Law is meant to be somewhat fluid, so as to adapt to the needs of society.

Turquoise wrote:

Kmarion wrote:

I'm talking on a personal level. The idea and the reasons for having them restricted to the roles they are supposed to do (no matter which way they lean) is the thought here. You are setting yourself up for potential catastrophe. You've made it clear that you think term limits should be extended also for congressmen. This obsessions with consolidating power is disturbing.

If it's any consolation, I believe Justices should have terms, not life appointments.

A rotating set of terms of 9 years would allow one Justice to be appointed each year, and this would keep perspectives in the Court up to date.

Law is meant to be somewhat fluid, so as to adapt to the needs of society.

I would disagree with 9 year terms because in the United States our political system generally swings back and forth every 12-16 years.  If we have 9 year terms, for example, Clinton would have had appoint probably 8 of the 9 current justices.  And Bush 8 of the 9 justices in the last 8 years. 

Lifetime appointments allow for the political pendulum to swing much more slowly in the Supreme Court.

#	Judge	State	Born	Active service	Term as Chief Justice	Appointed by	Reason fortermination
103	Antonin Gregory Scalia	VA	March 11, 1936 (73)	September 26, 1986–present	—	Reagan	—
104	Anthony McLeod Kennedy	CA	July 23, 1936 (73)	February 18, 1988–present	—	Reagan	—
105	David Hackett Souter	NH	September 17, 1939 (69)	October 9, 1990–June 29, 2009	(none)	G. H. W. Bush	retirement
106	Clarence Thomas	GA	June 23, 1948 (61)	October 23, 1991–present	—	G. H. W. Bush	—
107	Ruth Bader Ginsburg	NY	March 15, 1933 (75)	August 10, 1993–present	—	Clinton	—
108	Stephen Gerald Breyer	MA	August 15, 1938 (70)	August 3, 1994–present	—	Clinton	—
109	John Glover Roberts, Jr.	MD	January 27, 1955 (54)	September 29, 2005–present	September 29, 2005–present	G. W. Bush	—
110	Samuel Anthony Alito	NJ	April 1, 1950 (59)	January 31, 2006–present	—	G. W. Bush	—
111	Sonia Maria Sotomayor	NY	June 25, 1954 (65)	August 8, 2009–present	—	Obama	—

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ju … ted_StatesBefore Sotomayor was a justice the average age on the court was: 59.3 (youngest at 54 and oldest at 75)Now the average age is 58.9.Most justices (of the 102) die in office:

Reason for termination	Percentage
death	46.7%
retirement	34.3%
resignation	17.1%
other	1.9%

nickb64 wrote:

The system is broken, to a degree, because Sotomayor was accepted even though she will most likely not follow the intent of the Constitution in rulings.

The purpose of the Supreme Court is to interpret the law. How can a judge interpret the law if they do not look at what it meant when it was created. Many judges like Sotomayor insist that the meaning of the Constitution changes over time. Contracts, which is what the Constitution basically is, do not change in meaning over time, so why should the meaning of the Constitution change? Judges should not be able to essentially rewrite the law of the land, as that is the job given to Congress.

I would have to disagree that the constitution is a mere contract, its much more than that. An inflexible constitution is one of the reasons why the eastern block communist regimes fell. They had very inflexible constitutions and had basically constitutionalized their planned economies. The inflexibility led to their collapse.

In order for a constitution to be effective it must by necessity have enough flexibility to change with society. The only way that happens is if one of two things happen, the constitution is amended or the constitution is interpreted differently. Since the Constitution has only been amended 27 time in US history and the first ten were the bill of rights, shows that the constitution is inflexible as far as it amending formula, so the necessary flexibility must reside in constitutional interpretation.

Now if you look at history, the US follow British common law after independence and the founding fathers adopted British common law and Common law is judge made law. The Us also adopted British style courts with an adversarial court system.  Its rooted in America's history that judges should provide law, and constitutional law, its flexibility through interpretation of the law.

IMO the very positivist ideas that judge should only follow the law as set down by Congress or slavishly interpret the constitution using a textual approach is an idea introduced through immigration from continental Europe where those societies have civil codes and judges have much less authority to interpret those laws. These people brought those idea with them to the US, these ideas would not have been foreign to the founding fathers but the founding fathers instead choose to adopt the more adaptive common law system.

So the short answer is No, the Constitution is not merely a contract, the Constitution is more that its mere text. And Yes, the courts are empowered to interpret the constitution and they provide a valuable check on congressional authority and the possible abuses of legislative authority. That's the way our constitution is designed and anyone who would advocate that the courts should lose this authority is suspect as it would be another avenue towards tyranny.

One other thing, Don't be fooled by "social conservative" socialists who think that judges making decision agreeable to their positions are not activists. These judges are engaged in social engineering by choice and they are only feigning that their hands are tied by the text of the constitution or the original intent of the framers (which is really their opinion of what that intent was).

What these "conservative" judges are doing is attempting to slow the rate at which our flexible constitution changes based on their own predilections and prejudices. The one benefit of the go slow approach is that it gives people people who fear change the opportunity to become comfortable with the ideas or if change happens slow enough it gives them an idea time to live out their life and die off.  It also helps keep people who fear change from becoming frightened, alarmed and violent. Just look at the violence at the health care town halls where fear of change = violence. The one down fall of the go slow approach is that the courts exercise their authority in a way that sacrifices the rights of certain individuals for the sake of societal peace.


EDIT: fixed

Last edited by Diesel_dyk (2009-08-08 09:32:27)

Kmarion wrote:

Harmor wrote:

Lifetime appointments allow for the political pendulum to swing much more slowly in the Supreme Court.

..and it assures zero accountability. Their views should reflect the populations views (however rapid changing that might be). In order to accurately reflect the desire of the people our justices should be examined and voted on periodically. If the people feel the justices are taking them in the wrong direction they should, in a reasonable amount of time, be able to remove them. If not leave them in.

I see it as they are not beholden to any special interests.

Understand that Conservatives want reform as well. They just don't want (in their minds) to be strong-armed and forced into a government administered system.

I can't comment on the legitimacy of this idea because I haven't seen the bills. Not many people have.

Harmor wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

Law is meant to be somewhat fluid, so as to adapt to the needs of society.

I must disagree with this statement.  Law is not fluid or else we would have different opinions given for the same case within short periods of time.  Granted, generationally cases and laws can change as you mentioned earlier, but there should be a pretty good adherence to precedence.

The 'fluid' law concept is better if its applied using our Amendment system we have for our Constitution.  There is where laws agreed by two-thirds of all legislatures in the states should be changed as society changes it beliefs, not every 9 years in the Supreme Court.

Obama's next replacement on the court will be another liberal so the court's make-up won't change.  After that though his nominations will start changing the court to the left.

That's only assuming that conservative Justices would choose to retire during Obama's reign.  Most of the time, they wait until a leader they side with is in power.  So, it's more likely that only liberal Justices will retire while Obama is in charge.

Last edited by Turquoise (2009-08-08 12:55:55)

I'd say John Paul Stevens will retire next. He's 89 after all.

Ginsburg is a likelihood too with her health and age (76).

I have to admit, I hate this woman.

Sonia Sotomayor is a Latina, but that is not the problem. It is her association with La Raza,  her views on the second amendment and the sound of her voice. The fact that something like 60% of her rulings were over turned implies judicial activism.

But, as Rush has been saying  elections have consequences.

We just have to sit back and to a large extent watch and see. It doesn't matter what the birthers say, or the rednecks. We have a black man as president, and he put a member of La Raza on the highest court. These are strange days indeed.