BY IAN MILLHISER POSTED ON JUNE 19, 2011 AT 1: 8,102Share This 776Tweet This
Disgraced Former Justice Abe Fortas
Justice Clarence Thomas is an ethics problem in a black robe. Just eight months after ThinkProgress broke the story of Thomas’ attendance at a Koch-sponsored political fundraiser, we learn that Thomas doesn’t just do unethical favors for wealthy right-wing donors — they also do expensive favors for him.
Leading conservative donor Harlan Crow, whose company often litigates in federal court, provided $500,000 to allow Thomas’s wife to start a Tea Party group and he once gave Thomas a $19,000 Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank which frequently files briefs in Thomas’ Court, also gave Thomas a $15,000 gift.
Wikipedia
There are members of the Supreme Court that subscribe to Federalist Society point of view, and in fact are members of that society. This particularly caught my attention. The Society looks to Federalist Paper Number 78 for an articulation of the virtue of judicial restraint, as written by Alexander Hamilton: "It can be of no weight to say that the courts, on the pretense of a repugnancy, may substitute their own pleasure to the constitutional intentions of the legislature.... The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body."
I put to you that their pleasure is exactly how they find in most cases.
By the way the federalist was the group that wanted a lifelong term for the Supreme Court Justice.
Legislative Review Of Judicial Decisions[edit]
The primary point of contention between Hamilton and Brutus was in the well-founded concern that judges would substitute their will for the plain text of the Constitution, as exemplified by the Supreme Court's de facto revision of the Eleventh Amendment.[11] Hamilton conceded that no federal judge had the legal authority to impose his or her will on the people in defiance of the Constitution:
There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid. ...
To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them.
Brutus pointed out that the Constitution did not provide an effective mechanism for controlling judicial caprice:
There is no power above them, to control any of their decisions. There is no authority that can remove them, and they cannot be controlled by the laws of the legislature. In short, they are independent of the people, of the legislature, and of every power under heaven. Men placed in this situation will generally soon feel themselves independent of heaven itself. [12]
Hamilton viewed this apparent flaw in constitutional design as more of a virtue than a vice:
But it is not with a view to infractions of the Constitution only, that the independence of the judges may be an essential safeguard against the effects of occasional ill humors in the society. These sometimes extend no farther than to the injury of the private rights of particular classes of citizens, by unjust and partial laws. Here also the firmness of the judicial magistracy is of vast importance in mitigating the severity and confining the operation of such laws. It not only serves to moderate the immediate mischiefs of those which may have been passed, but it operates as a check upon the legislative body in passing them; who, perceiving that obstacles to the success of iniquitous intention are to be expected from the scruples of the courts, are in a manner compelled, by the very motives of the injustice they meditate, to qualify their attempts. This is a circumstance calculated to have more influence upon the character of our governments, then but few may be aware of.
It appears that Hamilton is relying on the efficacy of the writ of scire facias, (In the United States, the writ has been abolished) coupled with a presumption that other branches of government will not ignore unconstitutional judicial decisions, as a control upon judicial misconduct. What a joke you bet they will but first they must ask the Koch Brothers.
United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (who served as the original faculty advisor to the organization)[21][8]
• United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (who served as the original faculty advisor to the organization)[21]
• Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito[8]
• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas[8]
• Supreme Court Justice John G Roberts
•
My question to the American people!
How can we allow people that sit on the highest court in the land, and subscribe to the law as at their own pleasure stay on this court for a life time?
Were as in the past the Supreme Court has made political decisions that are not founded on constitutional interpretation we feel a change is in order. Because justices are appointed for life and the attitude of the American people flows between liberal and constrictive there are times that it makes our government diffusional and cannot achieve the goals of the electorate.
THE AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION
A NEWLY ELECTED PRESIDENT FOR THE FIRST TERM MAY REPLACE ANY THREE JUSTICES THE PROCESS FOR ALL THREE MUST BE STARTED WITHIN THE FIRST FOUR MONTHS IN OFFICE OR THE OPPORTUNITY IS LOST.