Tête-à-Tête-Tête

Appears to be another hatchet job by a journalist on what a story is versus how they wrote the story. I could be wrong, but nowhere did I see where Gonzales stated that judges were “unfit to rule” and should defer to the will of the president, but rather that judges shouldn’t let their personal opinions override the will of the people via elected representatives.

The objective for a judge is to rule on the legality of a case versus existing law, which is something that, sadly, has not been happening of late (the Kelo case that gave the gov’t the right to take our homes & give to Wal-Mart or justices looking to Europe’s constitutions when they don’t like the text of our own). I didn’t see where the AG thought that congress & the executive branch were above judgement, rather a note that if congress & the executive branch pass a law that easily meets constitutional standards, it isn’t right for a judge to reverse the policy based on no precedent whatsoever, but rather their own political preferences.

Like I stated, I could be wrong, but I saw a reporter giving a summary of something that wasn’t in evidence.

Am I wrong?

You see the best and I see the worst. I don’t think it is a matter of being right and wrong. Here is the way I read it

Gonzales says judges generally should defer to the will of the president and Congress when deciding national security cases.

and then

The Justice Department is appealing an August decision by U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit, who ruled the government’s warrantless surveillance program unconstitutional and ordered it stopped immediately.

So my interpretation of what Gonzales is saying is that there are times when judges are going to have to understand that the administration must sometimes operate outside the law and the judges are just going to have to trust that there are valid reasons for it without being given those reasons.

“We want to determine whether he understands the inherent limits that make an unelected judiciary inferior to Congress or the president in making policy judgments,” Gonzales says in the prepared speech. “That, for example, a judge will never be in the best position to know what is in the national security interests of our country.”

Shorter Gonzales. Trust us.

I can’t.

RW - if Gonzales said “defer to the law & constitution” that would be one thing. But courts aren’t there to defer to the will of the President or the Congress.

I don’t like Kelo either, but I’ll take a hundred Kelos over the coordinated effort on the part of some ideologues to undermine the role of the judiciary.

justices looking to Europe’s constitutions when they don’t like the text of our own

I think this is a product of having read a hatchet job. Justices do look at standards worldwide (and at home) when considering how to interpret our own Constitution - e.g. in determining whether the death penalty meets the standard of “cruel and unusual” as those terms apply today. I haven’t seen them substituting someone else’s constitution for our own.

Buck,
Appealing the case is part of our process, as often times court rulings are based on nothing more than personal whim (can anyone say the words “Ninth Circuit”?).

smijer,
It appears that Gonzales, and the executive branch, has and has always adhered to the law & constitution. When the USSC ruled against wiretaps, the practice immediately stopped & the prez pushed for legislation that outlined a consitutional avenue. “Ideologues” in the legislative/executive brances are under the scrutiny of the voters (as was seen last November). Ideologues on the courts, as has often been pointed out, are often under the assumption that their seat is the highest in the nation & above reproach. Incorrect, says the constitution (the one in America, which is something a certain USSC judge should keep in mind).

I don’t like Kelo either, but I’ll take a hundred Kelos over the coordinated effort on the part of some ideologues to undermine the role of the judiciary.

You can do something about the latter…..you can do little about the former, which is the problem that Gonzales pointed out. Kelo was a decision put forth by ideologues on courts throughout the process. The left was also upset with this, but why is it only the right that is upset with ideologues on the courts….I’m left with only the assumption that “the ends justify the means” is still the rational conclusion (see: Roe versus Wade).

When the USSC ruled against wiretaps, the practice immediately stopped & the prez pushed for legislation that outlined a consitutional avenue.

To my knowledge, the USSC hasn’t ruled on this yet, but a federal court has. But, look at that statement. I used to think the laws about stealing didn’t exactly apply in my case, but as soon as the court ruled I couldn’t steal, that practice stopped immediately.. Well, good that it stopped anyway.

I’m not 100% sure that the practice of warrantless phonetaps on Americans is stopping now (now that the dems control congress and getting legislative cover seems less likely) - I hope it is. I hope that Gonzales & co aren’t just blowing smoke here.

Ideologues in the court - I agree they are a bad thing. I don’t agree that they were the reason behind the Kelo decision (I think it was a case of dumbasses on the court - or put in more polite terms - a case where the justices did a poor job of applying constitutional law). I don’t agree that this was the reason behind the Roe v. Wade decision. In fact, reading how Roe v. Wade was decided I was very impressed by the lengths the justices went to to strike a balance between the state’s right to regulate medicine and the individual’s right to regulate their own bodies with privacy, since the balance between those two rights is very murky from the plain language of the constitution and was likewise from the legal precedent already set. Rightly or wrongly decided, it looks to me that it was decided on constitutional and legal grounds and no other.

But, ideologues on the court are a problem. How do you avoid that? Make the bench accountable to the people through elections? Hardly - electoral politics generates ideologues. See the Gingrich revolution for an example of what I mean by that. Doing so also undermines one of the roles of the bench: to protect unpopular rights and freedoms enshrined in constitutional law against the majority-driven electorate.

Frankly, I think that the system works pretty well as we have it set up. Giving lifetime appts removes justices from the vagaries of politics, insulating them from ideological movements. Requiring an oft-difficult confirmation process creates a situation where the justice candidates must be acceptable to a broad consensus of people, not just a simple majority. And, in cases where the system of installing judges goes extremely wrong, there remains the option of impeachment.

The right-wing war on the judiciary concerns me because it is sold as a war on “ideologues” in the judiciary, but I think it represents an attempt to weaken the judiciary and dispose of checks on the other branches. I could join a war on ideologues - I can’t join a war on the judiciary.