Still Good Food For Thought

[kcjenkins]

"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Monsieur A. Coray, 31 October 1823)

[jainen]

>>the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government<<

A fine case of buyer's remorse. It's not true, of course. An independent judiciary was one of the most important elements of the new form of government. Far from "helpless," the courts were designed to be an equal but separate branch of government. Neither "individual suitors" nor "the public at large" could remove a judge just because political opinions changed.

[zeke]

>>It's not true, of course<<

I see three choices, are there more??

1. K.C. misquoted T.J.

2. T.J. disebled.

3. Jainen understands the topic better than T.J.

z

[kcjenkins]

>>the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government<<

A fine case of buyer's remorse. It's not true, of course. An independent judiciary was one of the most important elements of the new form of government. Far from "helpless," the courts were designed to be an equal but separate branch of government. Neither "individual suitors" nor "the public at large" could remove a judge just because political opinions changed.

Yes, it was supposed to be independent and equal, Jainen, but in actual practice it quickly became unequal, as clearly demonstrated this year in the case involving Guantanamo trials. The SC first said, in an earlier case, that the Congress had to be the one to set the rules, then, when they did set them, and the Administration then followed those rules, the SC asserted it's total power by still throwing out the law that Congress had passed following the rules that they had set for it to do so. That is not equal, that is taking the total power, when they ignore the right that the Constitution gave Congress to make the laws. They did not decide based on Constitutional grounds, but rather they just did not like the law that was passed.