Loosing the Judiciary

Madison liberals are refreshingly honest about what they believe. Matthew Rothschild, an editor of The Progressive, posts a brief comment about the “demise of our democracy”.

Sawing Off the Judicial Branch: “The Constitution . . . provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime,” the Attorney General told a crowd at Georgetown Law School on September 29. He added that judges should display “a proper sense of judicial humility” and if they don’t, they “should not be shielded from criticism.”

At the same event, Newt Gingrich energetically followed up. Supreme Court decisions that are “so clearly at variance with the national will” should be overridden by Congress or the President, he said. Never mind that this goes against the foundational principle of our judiciary, as expounded in Marbury versus Madison way back in 1803, that the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of the law.

True progressives don’t like judicial humility and especially not in response to criticism of decisions in conflict with the desires of the population. Well forgive me for the lack of big crocodile tears, but no branch of government is perfect and immune from the ultimate judgment of the citizens who are the rightful owners of our public institutions. Government by consent of the governed is the first American precedent and nothing in Marbury v. Madison changes this fact.