Votto
Diamond Member
- Oct 31, 2012
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There are those within the Article V movement that would like to restrict the power of SCOTUS. Like all other branches in the Federal government, they have assumed too much authority and answer to on one.
Case in point, in Marbury v. Madison, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a court can declare an act of Congress void when it conflicts with the Constitution, according to the Legal Information Institute. The decision mades the Court the final arbiter of the constitutionality of congressional legislation.
Thomas Jefferson was furious with the Marbury decision. In a letter to Abigail Adams he wrote, "The Constitution meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
He later wrote, "To consider judges as the ulitimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.....and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
This is what Lincoln said of the Dred Scott decision that denied blacks equal rights under the law.
"I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne that could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decision to political purposes."
Just think, the nation was at the mercy of 5 men to overturn the inequality of blacks imposed by SCOTUS. Luckily it happened but only due to political expediency. If racists had continued to rule the day, SCOTUS would have been prone to the political leanings of their power base and not have overturned it.
Now turn the page to Woodrow Wilson, who held the opposite view of SCOTUS.
"The character of the process of constitutional adaption depends first of all upon the wise or unwise choice of statesmen, but ultimately and chiefly upon the option and purpose of the courts. The chief instrumentality by which the law of the Constitution has been extended to cover the facts of national development has course been judicial interpretations -- the decisions of the courts. The process of formal amendment of the Constitution was made so difficult by the provision of the Constitution itself that it has seldom been feasible to use it; and the difficulty of formal amendment has undoubtedly made the courts more liberal, not to say more lax, in their interpretation than they would otherwise have been. The whole business of adaption has been theirs, and they have undertaken it with open minds, sometimes even with boldness and a touch of audacity"
So, one the one hand, you have men like Jefferson and Lincoln who hold the view that the courts now have too much power. An oligarchy of 5 justices is all that is needed who are prone to the same vices of seeking money and political power as everyone else is prone to having. Then you have President Wilson and the rest of his Prog followers that are now in power who essentially advocate is appointing "wise" and "good" men to the post so that they can have a 5 man never ending perpetual constitutional convention.
It seems to me the only way to fix this, if at all, is the Article V movement.
Case in point, in Marbury v. Madison, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a court can declare an act of Congress void when it conflicts with the Constitution, according to the Legal Information Institute. The decision mades the Court the final arbiter of the constitutionality of congressional legislation.
Thomas Jefferson was furious with the Marbury decision. In a letter to Abigail Adams he wrote, "The Constitution meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
He later wrote, "To consider judges as the ulitimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.....and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
This is what Lincoln said of the Dred Scott decision that denied blacks equal rights under the law.
"I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne that could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decision to political purposes."
Just think, the nation was at the mercy of 5 men to overturn the inequality of blacks imposed by SCOTUS. Luckily it happened but only due to political expediency. If racists had continued to rule the day, SCOTUS would have been prone to the political leanings of their power base and not have overturned it.
Now turn the page to Woodrow Wilson, who held the opposite view of SCOTUS.
"The character of the process of constitutional adaption depends first of all upon the wise or unwise choice of statesmen, but ultimately and chiefly upon the option and purpose of the courts. The chief instrumentality by which the law of the Constitution has been extended to cover the facts of national development has course been judicial interpretations -- the decisions of the courts. The process of formal amendment of the Constitution was made so difficult by the provision of the Constitution itself that it has seldom been feasible to use it; and the difficulty of formal amendment has undoubtedly made the courts more liberal, not to say more lax, in their interpretation than they would otherwise have been. The whole business of adaption has been theirs, and they have undertaken it with open minds, sometimes even with boldness and a touch of audacity"
So, one the one hand, you have men like Jefferson and Lincoln who hold the view that the courts now have too much power. An oligarchy of 5 justices is all that is needed who are prone to the same vices of seeking money and political power as everyone else is prone to having. Then you have President Wilson and the rest of his Prog followers that are now in power who essentially advocate is appointing "wise" and "good" men to the post so that they can have a 5 man never ending perpetual constitutional convention.
It seems to me the only way to fix this, if at all, is the Article V movement.