Text 31309, 55 rader
Skriven 2016-02-19 01:42:46 av Lee Lofaso (2:203/2)
  Kommentar till text 31303 av BOB ACKLEY (1:123/140)
Ärende: Liberal USSC Coming
===========================
Hello Bob,

 >> ... Putting someone on the Supreme Court, maybe for the next thirty years,
 >> is huge by comparison. It will be an ugly fight.

 BA> It always is.  Ever since Roosevelt minor started selecting federal judges
 BA> and Supreme Court justices based on their political ideology rather than
 BA> any competence in law or the Constitution.

FDR did not have an ideology of his own.  He was all over the map,
not any one place.  His mistake was trying to pack the court, rather
than take his time building a broad concensus.  He had such great
early success rebuilding the economy that he thought the Congress
would basically rubber-stamp anything and everything he sought to
do.  And was rebuffed when it came to the US Supreme Court.

By trying to gain too much power, so quickly, FDR managed to
sabatoge his own economic plan of recovery, as well as his planned
second bill of rights (never enacted).  By the time he recovered
and had learned his lesson, WWII had begun.

 BA> Today Supreme Court justices - including the late Mr. Scalia - are just
 BA> political stooges.

I hate to say it, but I fear you are right about that.
Not may be right, but actually be right.

 BA> If court decisions were based on the Constitution court decisions would be
 BA> unanimous, but they're based on political ideology and are nearly always
 BA> split on ideological lines

Ideology is too constraining.  Especially political ideology.
The framers of the constitution knew what they were doing.  Most
of them were lawyers, and wrote a legal document to mean exactly
what they had intended to write.  Times change, as does the
thinking of the court.  But the words written by the framers
remain standing there forever.

Does the meaning of the US Constitution change over time, making
it a "living document"?  Or is it a static document, being something
that is frozen in time for all eternity?

We interpret things the way we want to interpret them.  In ways
that would most benefit us.  When a president nominates a justice,
he is thinking and expecting that justice to interpret things the
way he wants and expects that future justice to do so.  However,
once a justice is confirmed by the Senate and takes the oath of
office, the president sometimes has a rude awakening.

It probably sent President Eisenhower right straight to the hospital.

--Lee

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