Who is the Justice taking such outrageous positions? That's right, Mr. Scarborough's favorite, Justice Antonin Scalia.
Also, University of Texas Law Professor Brian Leiter points to this statement approved by the deans of the United States' top law schools (including Dean William Powers of the UT Law School and Dean Nancy Rapoport of the University of Houston Law Center), which provides the following common sense advice:
Recent threats of retaliation against federal judges by members of Congress and others harm the rule of law and the important constitutional principle of separation of powers. We strongly oppose these threats of retaliation. Regardless of whether we agree or disagree with their opininons, we express our full support for judges who properly discharge their constitutional responsibilities by deciding the cases before them as they believe the law requires.We recognize that Americans wil often disagree, as do we, with particular judicial opinions. But the legislative and executive branches have constitutional means available to them to seek to alter the law as declared by the judiciary. An effort to use those means is part of our tradition of separation of powers and is entirely proper. But it is irresponsible and harmful to our constitutional system and to the value of a judiciary that is independent, in fact and appearance, when prominent individuals and members of Congress state or imply that judges may be impeached or otherwise punished because of their rulings. We urge them to stop.
Posted by Tom at May 8, 2005 01:37 PM
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Tracked on May 12, 2005 07:48 AM
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But it is irresponsible and harmful to our constitutional system and to the value of a judiciary that is independent, in fact and appearance, when prominent individuals and members of Congress state or imply that judges may be impeached or otherwise punished because of their rulings.
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My goodness, surely our legal friends aren't trying to squelch the very political speech that they're devoted to protecting, are they? :) Because in Kev's constitutional world, even prominent members of other branches of government enjoy the right of political speech!
This notion that the judiciary should be free from criticism is peculiar -- and it's even more peculiar that certain legal academics tend to be at the forefront of pushing "political" lawmaking, yet are the first to object when such lawmaking draws political criticism.
Posted by: kevin whited at May 9, 2005 07:40 AM
Kevin, your characterization of the law profs' statement as raising a free speech issue blurs thei rX镉0rRH Wb. WvW㬐W㬐W㰐W & peachment of a legislator because of the legislator's propensity to propose patently unconstitutional legislation?
My sense is that the law profs would have the same criticism of th judiciary referred to in their statement.
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