.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

Cracker Squire

THE MUSINGS OF A TRADITIONAL SOUTHERN DEMOCRAT

My Photo
Name:
Location: Douglas, Coffee Co., The Other Georgia, United States

Sid in his law office where he sits when meeting with clients. Observant eyes will notice the statuette of one of Sid's favorite Democrats.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

I have always admired his intellect, but after this, I must say: he is way too risky & maybe even dangerous to ever have any power again. - Gingrich Takes Aim at Legal System.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich came out swinging Saturday against the nation's legal system, pledging if elected to defy Supreme Court rulings with which he disagrees and declaring that a 200-year-old principle of American government, judicial review to ensure that the political branches obey the Constitution, had been "grossly overstated."

Politicians often attack the judiciary for decisions they perceive as unpopular, a relatively painless tactic because judges, unlike electoral opponents, don't fight back. But Mr. Gingrich, a former House speaker, has gone further than any major candidate in recent memory, with scalding rhetoric rarely seen since the 1950s and '60s, when Southern politicians excoriated the Supreme Court for ordering the end to racial segregation, something many then argued exceeded the judiciary's constitutional power.

Mr. Gingrich referred to that era in campaign literature declaring that the Supreme Court's rationale for ordering states to obey its Brown v. Board of Education ruling to desegregate public schools was "factually and historically false."

If a President Gingrich were to follow through with his plans, he would almost certainly provoke a constitutional conflict with the head of the federal judiciary—Chief Justice John Roberts, who, as it happens, Mr. Gingrich has cited as one of his favorite justices. It already has divided him from leaders of the conservative legal movement, including former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who told Fox News that some of Mr. Gingrich's ideas are "dangerous, ridiculous, totally irresponsible, outrageous, off-the-wall and would reduce the entire judicial system to a spectacle."

Regardless of their approach to constitutional interpretation, Supreme Court justices have jealously guarded their prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government, particularly a foundational ruling that Mr. Gingrich sought to diminish, Marbury v. Madison.

Stemming from a constitutional conflict during the presidential transition from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, the 1803 decision by Chief Justice John Marshall clarified the federal judiciary's function in the constitutional system. The ruling's famous holding, that "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is," is carved in marble on the wall of the Supreme Court.

Rather than follow the Marbury precedent, Mr. Gingrich said Saturday he proposes "a floating, three-way constitutional system" in which any two of the three branches of federal power—the executive, legislative and judicial—could effectively overrule the other.

_______________

This is from Monday's Wall Street Journal.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home