How did a SCOTUS Justice confirmation become such a desperate struggle?
Was this always the case?
If not, what has changed?
Judicial review being “final” when it culminates with a SCOTUS ruling, SCOTUS rulings are treated as “the last word” on the any law’s consistency with the US Constitution until or unless overturned by another ruling by SCOTUS.
Since this has always been the case, how did SCOTUS become the political battleground its been in the last couple of generations?
I believe this trend – accelerating over recent years is a result of two factors – each of which amplifies the effect of the other:
- The American political left has, for generations, sought to impose a radical social agenda by Judicial Fiat: Selecting a sympathetic case to champion, they bypass the legislative process for changing laws (and by extension social mores) to challenge laws on constitutional grounds. Each victory won this way imposes change from the top-down by engaging the Federal judiciary in forcing revision to local and state law. This strategy requires Federal judges and SCOTUS justices willing to bypass the jurisdictional bounds of Federal power and to read “new meanings” into the Constitutional text.
- The ONLY limit on the exercise of SCOTUS’s judicial power is their own restraint. Where for generations, SCOTUS exercised restraint; declining cases in which a ruling from the Federal Judiciary would infringe on the sovereignty of the states and the right of the people to local governance, that restraint seems to have been abandoned since the Roe v Wade decision effectively nationalized a “right” to abort an unborn child.
The strategy has proved very successful and a much faster route to social change than would be possible via the political/legislative process. So it’s been replicated over and again; each time selecting a representative of a different aggrieved “identity group” in presenting a case to SCOTUS.
We’re looking at the results:
- An accelerating proliferation of “identity groups” each competing for the courts’ favor by demonstrating aggrieved status.
- Increasing Federal control of our personal, social, business, educational, medical and even religious lives.
- A more “central-government-focused” society. This is literally a crying shame, it’s so Un-American, but it’s also understandable when only 9 people can change the quality of our lives on a 5-4 vote.
No wonder people are flipping out at the prospect of a tie-breaking vote on the High Court!!
We have yielded entirely TOO MUCH power to SCOTUS to rule over our lives. The creeping encroachment of federal government influence in our lives happened over enough time, many may not be acutely aware of it. But the hysterical tenner over this confirmation cannot be missed. And that makes it obvious.
We have a problem.
What are we going to do about it?
What if the states’ legislatures could, by joining with other states in a regional pact, for instance, lawfully OVER-RULE a SCOTUS decision? Attempting such an act without relying on a lawful provision might replicate the insurrection that provoked the Civil War. But if there were a Constitutional Amendment offering LAWFUL and ORDERLY process for states’ overrule of a SCOTUS decision that infringes the right of the people to self-governance, its very presense would serve as a jurisdictional break on the high court.
Our Federal Government has become too big, too powerful, too costly and too much a part of our lives in ALL three branches. Learn what’s being done about that.
ConventionOfStates.com
