Blue_arrow posted:

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"I want to be sure that you are telling us that the Attorney General and the Department of Justice do recognize the authority of the federal courts through unelected judges to strike acts of Congress or portions thereof in appropriate cases," Smith said.

A somewhat surprised Kaersvang told Smith the Justice Department does recognize this power by the courts and made reference to a landmark 1803 case that formed the basis for judicial review.

However, Smith ordered Kaersvang to submit a letter to the appeals court by Thursday stating the position of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department on the concept of judicial review.

"The letter needs to be at least three pages, single spaced, no less and it needs to be specific. It needs to make specific reference to the president's statements," Smith said.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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The legal community is having a good laugh over this. I work with a people with pretty diverse political affiliations and all of them think that guy just made a total ass of himself. They're kinda happy some circuit besides the 9th is making the news for having a total douchebag moron on it.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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It's just so petty and obviously political. No one thinks Obama was saying the judiciary doesn't have the authority to find acts of congress unconstitutional. No one.

That judge is actually doing a great job of illustrating why judicial review can be problematic. If your bench is filled with petty minded individuals trying to score political points you can end up in a bad way.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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It's just so petty and obviously political. No one thinks Obama was saying the judiciary doesn't have the authority to find acts of congress unconstitutional. No one.

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Bjorvald posted:

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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It's just so petty and obviously political. No one thinks Obama was saying the judiciary doesn't have the authority to find acts of congress unconstitutional. No one.

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Well, except for President Obama, apparently.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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Obama didn't say that and doesn't think that. But I'm not surprised you are one of the idiots who thinks this judge wasn't making a complete fool out of himself.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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No he didn't.

He said it would be unprecedented to throw out this particulary law. Given, you know, what the precedent is. Funny how words work that way!

You can agree or disagree with that but his comments CLEARLY indicate he recognizes the judiciary has the power to declare laws unconstitutional.

I'm not surprised you're stuck on stupid, though.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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You can type. You don't seem to be able to read though.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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If it were me I'd have a hard time resisting a subtle jab here and there to point out what a total dofus the judge was, though.

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Bjorvald posted:

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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You can type. You don't seem to be able to read though.

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I can read well enough to understand "a law" vs. "this law". I don't imagine words that aren't there, like you.


edit: darn quotes ;P

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Attorney General William French Smith accused the federal courts of “constitutionally dubious and unwise intrusions upon the legislative domain,” and vowed to oppose such “subjective judicial policymaking.”

He outlined the [Reagan] administration’s plan for urging greater judicial restraint in areas including abortion rights, desegregation, the constitutional rights of aliens and prisoners, and environmental protection….

Smith said the department was working “to identify those key areas in which the courts might be convinced to desist from actual policymaking,” so that “errors of the past might be corrected” and “past trends might at least be halted.” ...

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay says that 'judges need to be intimidated' and that Congress should 'take no prisoners' in dealing with the courts." [4]

2.) It will expressly prohibit the judicial power of the United States or of any state from being used to redefine marriage as anything other than a union between one man and one woman; and 3.) It will resolve questions relating to the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act by incorporating language which would prohibit the courts from imposing the policy of one state on other states." [8]

GINGRICH: In the American system, if you read the Constitution correctly — this is why I wrote “A Nation Like No Other” — if you read the Federalist Papers correctly, the fact is the Congress can pass a law and can limit the Court’s jurisdiction. It’s written directly in the Constitution. The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton promises, I think it’s Number 78, that the judiciary branch is the weakest of the three branches. There is no Supreme Court in the American Constitution. There’s the court which is the Supreme of the judicial branch, but it’s not supreme over the legislative and executive branch. We now have this entire national elite that wants us to believe that any five lawyers are a Constitutional convention. That is profoundly un-American and profoundly wrong.

Something else that we can do to reinforce our pro-marriage, pro-life, pro-family agenda is to limit the subject-matter jurisdiction of the courts . … At the federal level with what are called Article III courts, Article III of the United States Constitution, we can limit the subject matter that justices can rule on. We have it within our authority to decide what judges can rule on and what they can’t. Any time the people speak, they say with one voice that marriage is one man, one woman.

Ashmaele posted:

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@Yuki: Odds that Obama DOJ tells judge to **** off and refuses to turn in homework?

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Some members of the federal judiciary...make up laws and invent new rights as they go along, arrogating to themselves powers King George III never dared to exercise. They free vicious criminals, pamper felons in prison, frivolously overturn State laws enacted by citizen referenda.

The federal judiciary, including the U.S. Supreme Court, has overstepped its authority under the Constitution. It has usurped the right of citizen legislators and popularly elected executives to make law by declaring duly enacted laws to be “unconstitutional” through the misapplication of the principle of judicial review. Any other role for the judiciary, especially when personal preferences masquerade as interpreting the law, is fundamentally at odds with our system of government in which the people and their representatives decide issues great and small.

In the federal courts, scores of judges with activist backgrounds in the hard-left now have lifetime tenure. Recent events have made it clear that these judges threaten America’s dearest institutions and our very way of life. The Pledge of Allegiance has already been invalidated by the courts once, and the Supreme Court’s ruling has left the Pledge in danger of being struck down again—not because the American people have rejected it and the values that it embodies, but because a handful of activist judges threaten to overturn commonsense and tradition...We believe that the self-proclaimed supremacy of these judicial activists is antithetical to the democratic ideals on which our nation was founded.