Senator Links Violence to 'Political' Decisions
'Unaccountable' Judiciary Raises Ire
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 5, 2005; Page A07
Sen. John Cornyn said yesterday that recent examples of courthouse violence may be linked to public anger over judges who make politically charged decisions without being held accountable.
In a Senate floor speech in which he sharply criticized a recent Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty, Cornyn (R-Tex.) -- a former Texas Supreme Court justice and member of the Judiciary Committee -- said Americans are growing increasingly frustrated by what he describes as activist jurists.
"It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions," he said. Sometimes, he said, "the Supreme Court has taken on this role as a policymaker rather than an enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people."
Cornyn continued: "I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. . . . And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have."
Maybe someone should ask Sen. Cornyn how he feels about US. vs. Cruikshank.
US vs. Cruikshank (1870) is one you should know about, P6: according to DuBois, it was the legal case that effectively disabled the 14th & 15th Amendments. The most spectacularly convoluted, contorted logic I've ever seen in a majority opinion.
The funny thing about activist judges: there's only one reason why a judge is going to be "active" about anything, and that's to make his job easier. There is no reason on earth to expect a statistical tilt of judges towards the left, certainly not when they're appointed by Reagan and the two Bushes (as nearly all federal judges are). There is ample reason to expect judges to lean right, because the main civil respondents in court are business. If you think of the law as a set of opinions that evolve to fit every possible situation, then it makes sense to expect them to interpret to assist business enterprise.