Doesn’t that mean a judge who does something you don’t approve of? Really now, be honest. The buzz words ‘interpret the Constitution’ is another one of those tricky little expressions. If all a justice had to do was to sit down and read the Constitution, then there would be no need for the Supreme Court. All interpretations and opinions not only come from reading the Constitution but also from studying other cases and what has been said about them.
Now the attack is on Justice Thurgood Marshall. People didn’t like his decisions. Therefore, he became an ‘activist judge.’ When I was a kid, all over the south there were signs that said ‘Impeach Earl Warren.’ He was probably an activist judge.
Right now, I am trying to sort out why Thurgood Marshall was an activist judge and Anthony Scalia isn’t. I think it has something to do with who likes his decisions. Just a hunch.
Elena Kagan worked for Thurgood Marshall. Perhaps she knew him better than the average bear. If his family is any indication, I can certainly understand why. Lovely people. I had the pleasure of knowing them through my employment about 15 years ago. They live locally, or at least they used to. Too bad Ms. Kagan had to hear her old boss trashed by that bunch of loser senators.
i think there is a fundamental difference between a scalia who honors and cherishes our constitution and the traditions that made america great, and a dyed in the wool hard core radical communist like kagan who will only using her position on the court to impose her and obama’s far left agenda like fiat on the american people
And I believe that last comment just made your point quite nicely, Moon-Howler…
Sad, very sad that liberals cannot and do not want to distinguish between the law, history, precedent and tradition and their political agenda. I understand how liberals prefer political elites over the will of the people – it has been that way in every progressive government – at least until those elites take power and begin to rule in the name of the people.
Oh so true, M-h. I suppose a challenge to the 14th amendment that made it to the SC wouldn’t be viewed as activism… Or a visitation of gun rights. Oh, no – they’re merely constitutional issues to be cleared up. Ha ha.
Since when is the Supreme Court based on the ‘will of the people?’ I thought we called ‘will of the people’ a referendum?
The Supreme Court should be based on rule of law, not a popularity contest.
I agree with MH. It’s not about the will of the people but the rule of law. As Robert’s said:
“If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, then the little guy’s going to win in the court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well then the big guy’s going to win because my obligation is to the Constitution.”
For example; Kelo v. City of New London was NOT something the people wanted but was decided in favor of the state. To remedy this states have passed laws restricting themselves from being able to capitalize on Kelo because they feared the wrath of the voters. In only a few states is it still possible to take a persons property from them and turn it over to a developer because it’ll generate more revenue for the government.
The SCOTUS has to work within the confines of the rule of law our Presidency is more akin to an American Idol contest with Congress coming a close second.
What?? The will of the people is reflected in the law – not some activist judge’s bending of the law or a private opinion of what is right.
Supreme Court justices and nominees will always be assessed positively or negatively by all parts of the political spectrum. They do not carry the title of “infallible” and are fair game just like all other governmental figures. What goes for conservatives also goes for liberals. After what happened to Judge Bork during his confirmation hearings and after what one sees so often in the liberal media and blogosphere about Justice Clarence Thomas, I cannot agree that the judicial reputation of Thurgood Marshall should be exempted from criticism if one is so disposed. If these Republican senators are “losers” for criticizing Marshall’s reputation as a jurist, then one would have to call the late Ted Kennedy a “loser” for savaging Judge Bork reputation as a jurist during the confirmation hearings.
Most people sitting in the Kagan chair don’t have to listen to their old boss getting trashed. She is in a unique position. She was an employee. She also liked her boss.
My criticizm is not so much that Marshall was criticized but rather how he was criticized….to nail her.
People have said a lot worse about Ted Kennedy. And truthfully, I don’t remember the rules, just that it was brutal. I don’t think the word ‘borked’ would be a word by its own rights if that were not the case.
I don’t see how any of these people stand up to hours upon hours of verbal grilling.
TP, you wish! What do you think most of our laws are? Is the health care act YOUR will?
The Constitution itself is a hammered out series of compromises.
Marshall was criticized for the logic he used to come to his judicial decisions. If those senators disagreed with Marshall’s logic, then they would naturally seek to know how much a “Justice Kagan” would parallel that type of logic on the bench. This is more critical because she actually clerked for Marshall and admittedly admired him. I would fully expect a Leahy or Durbin or whomever to use the same tactics if the nominee was a former clerk and open admirer of Scalia or Roberts. I think this is quite normal under the circumstances.
Its all in the ‘how.’ I am sitting here thinking now to myself….is there a bigger blowhard than Jeff Sessions? He isn’t searching for the truth, he is posturing.
Most of those senators who disagreed with Marshall’s logic probably weren’t qualified to agree or disagree.
I am not great fan of Marshall’s decisions, btw. But I am not qualified to evalutate them from a judicial point of view.
Yes, you are “qualified”, Moonhowler. You are educated. You have read the Constitution. You have a political point of view which is important to you. You can read and ponder the actual decisions of the court. And most importantly…you are a stakeholder in this country. None of us should ever cede anything to the political ruling class because we feel somehow inferior in knowledge and understanding. That’s the road to tyranny. Unabashedly kick up a storm when you are unhappy. In my view, freedom thrives on that. If you are proven wrong, you can admit it. But we have developed in this country a blend of people and culture with a surprising combination of determination and common sense…not to forget a willingness to fight for what one believes in.
And I think that is what creates a bunch of blow-hards who don’t know what they are talking about. Yes, I can read and have an opinion but I admit I can ‘t take out someone’s appendix, teach Russian, launch a rocket or decide a case before the Supreme Court. That takes a special skill level.
I can certainly yammer and bark at my congress folks to make or change laws. But that interpretation….nah….those things are based on a body of knowledge involving thousands of cases. I am not arrogant enough to think I can step into any of their shoes…even those I don’t agree with.
“but I admit I can‘t take out someone’s appendix, teach Russian, launch a rocket or decide a case before the Supreme Court. That takes a special skill level.”
But Wolfie, you could if you stayed in a Holiday Inn Express.
Bwaaa hahahaha Yes Rez, but until that day…I lack the power. sigh. Actually, there is one right up the street….maybe I can shoot those rockets right there from the parking lot…straight across I66.
Ditto to Jeff Sessions being a blowhard. Dh went to school with Sessions and declared him a nice guy, but a couple confirmation hearings later, he’s willing to admit that “blowhard” fits as well.
So, Moon, let us apply this logic to another case. Unless you are hiding something from us, you have not been in the oil business, drilled for oil, engaged in ocean drilling, or even been on an oil rig. Neither have I. Heck, I’ve never even been on the Louisiana coast. Ergo, neither of us has any right to criticize the executives of BP over that oil spill. When it comes right down to it, neither of us has the knowledge to make any kind of an argument eiither way.
Sessions is a “blowhard”? You are kidding, right? Being a “blowhard” is part of the job requirements for a politician, is it not? Anyway, it seems to be something they all have in common regardless of party or ideology. Calling a politician a “blowhard” is like saying a horse has four legs. Pelosi isn’t a “blowhard”? Schumer isn’t a “blowhard”? McCain isn’t a “blowhard”? McConnell isn’t a “blowhard”? Leahy isn’t a “blowhard”? Need I say a word about Barney Frank or Henry Waxman? Heck, I find it hard to tell the difference between Waxman and the Santa Ana winds in Southern California.
And why this protectiveness toward Kagan? She is up for a seat on the highest court in the land. She has to go through the same gauntlet as anyone else. Tough luck. Sit in the temporary hot seat or decline the nomination. The video in this thread makes her look like a poor little fieldmouse about to encounter an owl. Why should Sessions be holding back on her? I thought we were finally getting past giving a free pass to anyone for any reason. Compared to what Bork and Clarence Thomas got, Kagan looks like she may be headed eventually for a comfort zone of some sort. All things being equal, the final vote will probably be a gimme anyway, grilling or no grilling.
I thought Holiday Inn Express was where you popped out of a suitcase and became a famous golf pro. Or am I thinking of another establishment?
Why am I protective of Kagan? I am not sure. I don’t think she should be protected from this process….necessarily. She appears to be attempting to answer rather than dodge like men who have sat in that seat do. Yes, that was a sexist remark.
As for Clarence Thomas, no comment. I have mixed feelings there.
Yes, all are blow hards that you named but some bigger, more obnoxious blowhards than others. Don’t get me started on Waxman. He just pisses me off looking at him, before he opens his mouth. But he isn’t up there calling someone a liar in so many words. Sessions lacks the cajones to just call her a liar.
And you are evil, Wolverine. You made me sputter coffee on my computer screen over horses having 4 legs.
Actually, Mr. Howler was in the oil business but at the corp. end. He worked for BP after they bought out Sinclair. They shut down the branch he worked for. He went around and managed stations for corporate. I guess that doesn’t count. And I agree with you. I think the gulf spill is horrible but I am not all about finger pointing. It solves nothing and I don’t know enough to know who to blame. I expect BP carries the lions share of the burden of guilt since it was their equipment and their personnel.
An aside about Sessions:
Only the second nominee to the Federal judiciary in 48 years, whose nomination was killed by the Senate Judiciary Commitee (1986). Also, the nomination was sent to the Senate without recommendation.
Decrypt that please, Punchak.
Judicial activism is in the eye of the beholder. When a judgment goes your way, you say the law was on your side, when the judge tilts towards the opponent, it is activism.
What gets me, is often, those on the right, just spit out “Liberals, those damn Liberals”. And to many on the right, a Liberal is anyone more left then themselves.
Sessions does have a colorful past – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sessions – funny how this committee, that he now serves on, did not agree with him back in the 80’s. So, did Sessions change, or the committee change.
@Moon-howler
>>> As for Clarence Thomas, no comment. I have mixed feelings there.
Oh, please expound!
I think that judicial activism is fairly easy to explain. Interpreting the Constitution involves defining the boundaries and limits of the various clauses
without twisting or contorting well understood phrases beyond their current meaning to “find” new rights or powers. The Constitution was written to be easily understood by educated voters.
If a justice suddenly finds new meaning, then that is activism. For instance,nowhere in the Constitution is the”right” to privacy mentioned. Rights deriving from penumbra are examples of activism.
Sessions is definitely colorful. Sessions is too young to make the remarks he has made. If he were older, perhaps we could chalk it off to another time. No. If the rest of the alpha boomers can learn what’s appropriate and what isn’t, so can he. @Pat. I agree with almost everyth8ing you said, but I usually do.
Kelly, apparently enough people saw that old prenumbra to hand down a 7-2 decision with at least 1 major case. Same with Griswold.
I really think activist judges are ones with whom you don’t agree.
One has to ask one’s self if this grilling is all worth any job. I would have to get paid a couple million to go through all that.
Sessions had a good record in the law from 1975 to 2003. JD University of Alabama 1973. Asst. US Attorney for Southern Alabama in 1975-1981. US Attorney for Southern Alabama 1981-2003. Nominated by Reagan in 1986 for the US District Court for Southern Alabama. What got him in trouble with regard to the District Court nomination was the recall of a few personal remarks which could have been construed in the direction of racial bias. Two of the keys to the failed nomination were Republican senators Arlen Specter and another whose name escapes me for the moment. The nomination sank when former Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama finally withdrew his committee support. That was the death blow for the appointment (actually the final vote, as I recall, was 8-8). Years later, after Sessions was elected to the Senate and named to the very committee which had rejected his own nomination, Specter reportedly changed his mind about Sessions and is said to have stated that Sessions was very much “egalitarian.” So, it looks like Sessions had his own “macaca” moment back in 1986 but eventually survived it.
What I find very distasteful about the Kagan nomination to the USSC is that some Democrats and pundits are touting her lack of prior court experience as a plus — a fresh viewpoint, you might say. Well, that is the same “official” line used in reverse by the Democrats to sink the Bush nomination of Miguel Estrada to the DC Court of Appeals. They claimed that Estrada had no actual bench experience, even though he was known as an accomplished litigator before the Appeals Court as an assistant solicitor in the DOJ. (There is the additional issue that neither Estrada nor Kagan had enough of their legal writings released by their respective adminstration archives.)
Actually, somebody on the nominating committe just raised the issue of that disparity with Kagan herself. She replied that she thought Estrada was eminently qualified for the Appeals Court and even for the Supreme Court and offered to put that in writing. How our politicians have come down to playing a game of falsehoods with each other right out in the open air! Actually, I and others have suspected that the real reason Estrada lost out was because he was Hispanic (immigrant from Honduras); and the Dems did not wish to be one-upped by the Repubs with regard to appointments of Hispanics to high-level court positions. My, we have allowed our politicos to build these foul little nests of deceptions and play the rest of us like a piano. One of my personal “Tea Party” goals? No more BS. Just some “plain speaking” a la good old Harry S. from Independence, Missouri.
Funny how Harry Truman has come into favor now. It took some 50 years but he’s finally done it.
I wish things could be discussed without the normal political labels. We are just playing in to the system.
Sessions is too young to be allowed a pass for making racial remarks. I can forgive someone Sen. Byrd’s age. Sessions should have known better. That sort of amazes me that he didn’t.
Hey, Moon, you are a Southerner born and bred. This is southern Alabama we are talking about here. As deep as you can get into the Deep South. Know it well. I have relatives there. I think Sessions got involved unthinkingly at some point in some of that “good old boy” banter. His opponents capitalized on that to no end, and I think Heflin just saw the reality written on the wall with regard to the acceptance or non-acceptance of the nomination. It’s not like Sessions was accused of being a member of the KKK. When Specter got to know Sessions better, he made a much different call about the guy’s racial attitudes.
My only personal frame of reference is Georgia as far as deep south goes. Maybe I am being forgetful. I don’t know his story other than the retell, which I am sure isn’t to his benefit.
Let me just do a general statement on this subject: I don’t care what people say in their own homes. That’s none of my business. I expect the favor returned. However….Sessions went to college in the 60’s and it was then he should have cast aside the old ways and learned the new ways, if he was going to exist in a political world. Many of us resent having to be PC all the time. However, the times they were a changin back then and he should have known better. I hope he did and someone caught him in a private moment. That I can forgive.
I don’t care much for catching someone in private moments. That’s too papparazi for me. I even sided with that gross dog butt Dawg the Bounty Hunter, much as it pained me. He thought he was having a private conversation.
Wolverine, my husband went to school with Jeff Sessions, and, although he had the benefit of being born on the left coast and living overseas, he is lightyears ahead of Jeff Sessions when it comes to realizing “the times, they are a-changing”.
I grew up in Georgia (with Yankee parents) and know the some people have changed considerably and others have not.
I’m not worried about “activist” judges. I’m worried about HONEST judges. And evidence is coming forth that Kagan will lie to support the left’s agenda.
Oh Cargo……Where is it coming from? She is going to be confirmed.