Tuesday, May 26, 2009

What is the role of the Judicial Branch? Do you stand with Sonia Sotomayor or Alexander Hamilton?

Sonia Sotomayor, typical of a liberal judge, is an activist.  She believes that she has a job "where policy is made."  That's not me putting words in her mouth, by the way, that's what she said at Duke University's Law School back in 2005.  Check her out at this link.

Sotomayor is "not promoting" judicial activism, of course, or "advocating it" because she knows that she's being recorded.  But "ya' know" it is clearly what she thinks.

What did the founding fathers of our country think was the role of the judiciary?  Making policy?  Certainly not.  Maybe she didn't read Federalist No. 78 at Princeton or Yale.  In it, Alexander Hamilton wrote that "the interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts."  Interpretation!  Not creation from whole cloth.  The courts are not the place to make policy.  

"The courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority."  They were not designed to expand or even to have own authority.

Again quoting Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, "the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in capacity to annoy or injure them.  . . . It may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its own judgments."

Alas, the judiciary has become as dangerous as the executive or legislative branches.  And it has done so creepingly over the past few decades.  Either under the blind eyes or with the complicity of presidents and congresses of both parties and all political persuasions, each for their own purposes.

The courts must be reigned in and limited to the nature of their original functions or liberty will continue to creep away . . . stolen by unelected judges . . . right from under our noses.  Sonia Sotomayor does not appear to be up to or accepting of that task.

2 comments:

dameon said...

Unfortunately, however, she is right. Because the laws written by the legislature are so full of loopholes and open to interpretation, it allows the Supreme Court to create policy by interpreting the laws the way they feel they should be. Just look at the Bill of Rights - the courts have been fighting over what the 1st & 2nd Amendments, among others, actually mean for 220 years now.

Word is she's a liberal activist. I'm just hoping her Catholic background will ring true and hold her to a pro-life stance. That would be better than any other judge we get out of Obama.

St. Louis Conservative said...

Don't get your hopes up on the Life issue.