Over Ginsburg's Dissent, Court Limits Bias Suits - washingtonpost.com.
Ever since my 7th grade social studies class, I have been taught that judges are the impartial arbiters of the law. They are presented with a situation, briefed by both sides as to the debatable issues and circumstances and then render a fair and just verdict based on the existing law.
In my 7th grade world, as it is today, I truly believed I knew how the system worked. Or, at least, how it should work.
Now I am not quite so sure that our system of justice is not broken — broken by those who have not been able to win at the ballot box and who have turned to the courts to write legislation that the elected legislators will not impose on the citizens of the United States.
In short: activist judges who see the law as a living document which can be molded into a variety of different meanings based upon the jurist’s political leanings or their interpretation of the social good.
We have been provided with an object lesson by an admitted activist (and liberal) judge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
By way of background, courtesy of Wikipedia…
Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg (born March 15, 1933, Brooklyn, New York) is an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to joining the Court, she was a professor at Rutgers University School of Law, Newark School of Law and Columbia Law School, a litigator for the American Civil Liberties Union, and a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. During much of her life, she has been active in the women's rights movement, and is today considered one of the Court's more liberal justices. She is the second woman and first Jewish woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court.”
In a matter that could have opened the door to thousands of lawsuits and cost organizations untold millions of dollars in fines and penalties, Justice Ginsberg attempted to subvert an existing law and extend it into something that the legislature never intended. While she was voted down by the razor-thin margin of 5–4, she did admonish the Court with a dissenting opinion.
From Robert Barnes writing for the Washingtonpost.com…
“A Supreme Court once again split by the thinnest of margins ruled yesterday that workers may not sue their employers over unequal pay caused by discrimination alleged to have occurred years earlier.”
“The court ruled 5 to 4 that Lilly Ledbetter, the lone female supervisor at a tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., did not file her lawsuit against Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. in the timely manner specified by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
“The decision moved Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to read a dissent from the bench, a usually rare practice that she has now employed twice in the past six weeks to criticize the majority for opinions that she said undermine women's rights.”
"’In our view, the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination,’ she said.”
“Yesterday she said that ‘Title VII was meant to govern real-world employment practices, and that world is what the court today ignores.’ She called for Congress to correct what she sees as the Court's mistake.”
“In a case that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said was easily decided on the statute "as written," her statement from the bench was noteworthy.”
“Last month, Ginsburg rebuked the same five-justice majority for upholding the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act and for language in the opinion that she said reflected ‘ancient notions about women's place in the family and under the Constitution -- ideas that have long since been discredited.’”
Woman’s rights under the constitution? At the risk of being labeled a “male chauvinist pig,” I assert that women have no rights that not conferred on all citizens, equally, fairly and impartially. There may be special laws dealing with women-related issues, especially in the area of reproductive rights, but I do not believe that jurists should engage in social engineering for the benefit of a particular class of people to the detriment of another class of people. For doing so invites abuse and perverts the system.
In keeping with the separation of powers intent of our founding fathers, Laws are written by Legislators, administered by the Administration and adjudicated as to their adherence to the Constitution and case law by the Judiciary. In short, legislators make law, not judges.
It is an increasingly activist judiciary that is extending the bounds of rational jurisprudence and venturing into areas that can charitably described as social engineering.
Although the Constitution does not extend the right of citizenship to those born of foreign parents while on American soil, a tortured interpretation of the 14th Amendment has been used to justify the legalization of hundreds of thousands of activists babies which have cost the system millions and millions of dollars in social and educational care benefits.
If a generous American public wanted to confer these rights on non-citizens, it does so through legislation such as the current comprehensive immigration reform act — not from some tortured interpretation of the law.
Added to the Constitution to insure that individual states did not deny citizenship to slaves after the civil war, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution states, “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.”
Considering that there was no immigration policy in those days, the framers of the amendment saw little reason to extend its coverage specifically to those who are foreign born.
Thus activist judges have interpreted “subject to jurisdiction thereof” in a manner favorable to children born of foreign parents. The counter argument against citizenship has often been argued by claiming that “because a child’s native country can exert a claim of allegiance on the child due to their parent’s prior citizen status, that their allegiance to the United States is impaired and precludes automatic citizen status.”
In fact, the United States is among the few countries that still grant automatic citizenship for those born on native soil. Our fellow-nations, the United Kingdom and Australia, have repealed their policies after observing immigration abuses in their own countries. Abuses such that a mass influx of aliens threatened to change the very character of their culture and became a net deficit claim on their social services.
Activist judges should not be appointed to the bench at any level. While we criticize the current President and his Administration for a host of problems, we should be grateful for his appointment of “strict constructionist” judges to a number of courts and especially thankful for his nominations to the Supreme Court.
What can YOU do?
Consider the actions of the Senate when confirming Federal judges. Watch confirmation hearings if possible.
Ask any proposed politician for high office how they feel about activist judges. And then, vote accordingly.
— steve
A reminder from OneCitizenSpeaking.com: a large improvement can result from a small change…
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