From CentreDaily.com:
Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor says the Supreme Court should generally follow its prior rulings so the public has confidence that laws do not change just because justices come and go.
The Supreme Court should follow precedent like they did when they overruled existing laws against abortion in 1973?
The Supreme Court should follow precedent like they did when they overruled existing laws against sodomy in 2003?
The Supreme Court should follow precedent like they did when they said people were property (Dred Scott)?
These are just a few examples where following precident was stupid and at odds with the Constitution, or the court found reason to depart from following precedent (otherwise known as the judicial philosophy of "follow precedent except for when you don't").
This kind of doublespeak from O'Connor is just code language for "Liberals should be allowed to keep the legal victories they've gained so far." (Until such time as they can get even more, that is.)
O'Connor says following prior rulings would boost public confidence in the courts, specifically that "laws do not change just because justices come and go."
There's actually a much easier, much more sound, and much more reliable way of accomplishing this than some overweening devotion to stare decisis: it's looking at that the Constitution originally intended.
If you owned a business, how well would you like it and how well would your business function if your employees were allowed to redefine your instructions based on their own perceptions of their own "evolving needs?"
If you were a parent, how well would you like it and how well would your children develop if those children were allowed to redefine your rules and instructions to them based on how they perceived their own "changing needs?"
I think the answer to these two scenarios is obvious. The answer to the legal and Constitutional question is just as obvious; it only becomes clouded when our personal goals and desires are restrained by the Constitution.
There is an authorized and wise method for changing things about the Constitution that we don't like (and it was once used fairly often before liberals figured out they could get oligarchs in black robes to do it for them much easier and quicker). You pass a law with a 2/3 majority in the House and Senate and the ratification of 3/4 of the states.
That's the way it used to be done, and that's the way we should go back to. What we currently have is a majority of nine judges making law in this land, and that's not a representative democracy, but an oligarchy.
2 comments:
Bob:
Wasn't Justice O'Connor a Reagan appointee?
Seems to me to be one of the few things The Gipper got right.
She was a very capable and thoughtful justice. The fact that you couldn't predict how she would vote, to me, means she considered issues based on the law and the facts, the way judges and justices are supposed to.
Todd
Yes, she was a Reagan appointee; one of the few things the Gipper got wrong. I think this was one of the few times he gave in and tried to please liberals by appointing a woman, regardless of whether she was going to adhere to the Constitution. I was a youth when she was appointed, but I remember all the buzz being about her being a woman SCOTUS judge and little else. Too bad Reagan missed an opportunity to appoint another one like Scalia who understands original intent.
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