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Responsibility #26
(written prior to July 1992)
To the People of the United States of America:
In the last paper, we identified how the Supreme Court could play a greater role, in assuring good and timely government. We called for expansion of the number of Justices, and their operation in multiple panels. Now let us summarize some of the benefits of these recommendations.
By changing the nomination function of Justices from the President to the Judiciary, we have greatly reduced if not eliminated politics in the federal courts. Establishing a requirement that Senate confirmation, and high profile Congressional, hearings be presided over by a Justice, will result in the control of politics in these critical proceedings.
Justice will be more just, because it will be more timely. The Supreme Court will have the capacity and means to handle all the cases and questions, properly referred to it in the year of referral. Timely justice will save lives (measured in the millions in the case of abortion, measured in at least the hundreds of thousands in the case of war powers). Timely justice will increase happiness, and the general welfare. Timely justice will reduce the volume of cases in the state and federal judicial systems. There will be considerable reduction, in direct costs of litigation, and many-fold reductions in the costly consequences of slow justice to We the People.
Politicians will no longer have the Supreme Court for a whipping boy, for their own non-performance. The President, the Congress, and the States would have a means, to have constitutional questions referred to the Supreme Court without long delays. The will of the Supreme Court could be overruled by veto action, or by Constitutional amendment.
With the expansion of the number of Justices, with the operation of multiple panels, and with the obligation of the Chief Justice for the lack of bias in the assignments to panels, there should be no concern about lack of balance in the Court. As a double check, the Congress could invoke oversight privilege.
With the lifetime tenure specified in the Constitution, sickness, incapacity, and possible senility, of one or more Justices, have at times been a concern, and possibly an impediment to the functioning of the Court. There would no longer be reason to consider a constitutional change, which would allow removal of a Justice without impeachment. Also, the term limitation as Chief Justice can preclude the indefinite dominance of the Court, by an unworthy leader. It may give all the Justices further incentive to work as a team, given the possibility of individual selection for that post.
We can hope that the expansion would cause the Court to reconsider how it conducts a case, and comes to a decision. Allowance of greater time for oral arguments, rebuttals, and rehearings would provide greater assurance that the Justices have heard and seen all that they should, before reaching individual first or final decisions. Confidence in justice in the findings would be enhanced, if the written opinions triggered the decisions, rather than vice versa.
Having addressed the future for the Supreme Court, let us respond to the question: How may its past judicial errors be corrected? Considering the dire present condition of our ship of state, it is requisite that our President, our Congress, each and every State, and the Supreme Court take a broom or swab in hand.
We need to identify all findings of the Supreme Court, that have caused or abetted our drift into immorality, greed, self-gratification, and otherwise to the neglect of our God, our nation, our families, and our fellow man. These must be reversed by the Court, or be replaced by new laws (constitutional amendments if necessary), that correct or constrain the deleterious consequences of the judicial mistakes.
Our nation takes great pride in its Bill of Rights, which were set forward in the first ten amendments to the Constitution. And rightfully it should! But they have been wrongfully applied, particularly by the Supreme Court.
Our founding fathers were initially averse, to including a Bill of Rights in the Constitution. Publius (Alexander Hamilton) wrote in Federalist No. 84: ".... I .... affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colourable pretext to claim more than were granted."
Dangerous indeed they have proven to be! We the People have not only had to contend, with the danger foreseen by Publius and other founding fathers; i.e., the federal government assuming powers not granted. We have had the Supreme Court recognize (invent and legislate) rights, that cannot be found in, or convincingly inferred from, the Constitution. We have had the Supreme Court favor one right, and deny or inhibit the exercise of another right, both within the same first Amendment to the Constitution (i.e., religion). We have had the federal government stand behind one right earlier in our history, and then turn around and take such liberties for the convenience of the government, as to effectively deny its existence (i.e., property rights).
Worst of all we have had the Supreme Court, like the politicians in the other two branches, respond to pressures from special interest groups. These responses were on the pretext of bowing to (the Justices' perception of) the popular mood (a role not intended for, nor capable of, the Judiciary).
Neither the Supreme Court, nor the Congress, placed necessary constraints on these newly created rights and privacies (see earlier and later Responsibility essays). None of the branches played the role of the little Dutch boy, by putting thumbs into these holes in the morality dikes. So the holes have proliferated, and developed into cracks, threatening to inundate and cause the demise, of the "noble experiment" which our founding fathers set in motion in 1789.
Every RIGHT must have a RESPONSIBILITY. The lack of attention to responsibilities is the Achilles heel of the United States of America. The remainder of these papers will be devoted to medication, of this plague on us and our posterity.
Publius IV
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