ConfirmThem

By AndrewHyman Posted in SCOTUS — Comments () / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

The President made a statement about judicial activism, and it's interesting. Here's an excerpt, which starts out discussing Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who served on the Supreme Court between 1910 and 1941.

[A]s Chief Justice Hughes has said, “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is." The Court, in addition to the proper use of its judicial functions, has improperly set itself up as a third House of the Congress --- a superlegislature, as one of the justices has called it --- reading into the Constitution words and implications which are not there and which were never intended to be there.

We have, therefore, reached the point as a nation where we must take action to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself. We must find a way to take an appeal from the Supreme Court to the Constitution itself. We want a Supreme Court which will do justice under the Constitution --- not over it. In our courts we want a government of laws and not of men.

I want --- as all Americans want --- an independent judiciary as proposed by the framers of the Constitution. That means a Supreme Court that will enforce the Constitution as written --- that will refuse to amend the Constitution by the arbitrary exercise of judicial power --- amendment by judicial say-so.

Click here for the full transcript. President Bush --- like his predecessor FDR --- disagrees with what Chief Justice Hughes said. However, Anthony Lewis of the New York Times has just written a book review praising Hughes and his judicial activism. Lewis apparently thinks that the United States Constitution has no meaning except what judges say it means.