http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/2/2/172414.shtml
Justice Ginsburg Snipes at Rep. DeLay
NewsMax.com Wires
Saturday, Feb. 3, 2001
WASHINGTON – Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told an Australian audience Thursday that public confidence in the U.S. judiciary would survive the Supreme Court decision that decided the presidential election, and she took a verbal swing at House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.
The transcript of her speech was released Friday at the Supreme Court. The justices are in the middle of a four-week recess.
"Whatever final judgment awaits Bush vs. Gore in the annals of history," Ginsburg told the University of Melbourne Law School, "I am certain that the good work and good faith of the U.S. federal judiciary as a whole will continue to sustain public confidence at a level never beyond repair."
Besides offering that indirect criticism, Ginsburg gave an account of the process that led to the Supreme Court's decision Dec. 12 that ended hand recounts in Florida, ensuring that President Bush would win that state's electoral votes and the White House.
Ginsburg was among the minority in the 5-4 decision.
Her comments on DeLay were more pointed in the speech, titled "Remarks on Judicial Independence." Direct criticism of members of Congress by Supreme Court justices is almost unprecedented.
"One powerful member of the U.S. Congress, Tom DeLay, has advocated the impeachment of judges who render unpopular decisions that, in his view, do not follow the law," Ginsburg said. "Mr. DeLay, who is not a lawyer but, I'm told, an exterminator by profession, placed on his list of judicial pests a district court judge in San Antonio, Texas, who held up certification of the election of two Republican victors in races for county sheriff and county commissioner."
The judge removed the stay after a state court determined that military absentee ballots were valid.
"In justification of his effort to expand the use of impeachment, Congressman DeLay commented that federal judges 'need to be intimidated,' " Ginsburg said.
"If Mr. DeLay's initiative should come to pass, then I suppose I might someday end up on his list of impeachment targets. ... Unnerving as such threats may be," Ginsburg said, "I think the New York Times columnist Bob Herbert got it right when he said in a December 2000 column, 'an intimidated judge is a worthless judge.' "
Ginsburg also criticized Congress' tactics in delaying, and in some cases never acting on, former President Clinton's judicial nominees.
"In addition to threats of impeachment, recent congressional attacks on judicial independence have included what can fairly be described as political hazing of federal judicial nominees," she said, and called for streamlined treatment in the new Congress.
"… It remains to be seen how President Bush, facing a Senate evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, will fare with his judicial nominees," Ginsburg said. "Yet whatever the party division in Congress, the performance of the federal judiciary depends critically, as I see it, on efforts to streamline the nomination and confirmation process."
Ginsburg attacked a proposal by former appellate judge Robert Bork, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was derailed in 1987 by Senate Democrats, that a constitutional amendment be adopted to allow a majority of Congress to overturn court rulings.
"The founders of the United States never envisioned a rule of law based on pure majoritarianism," Ginsburg said. "And I see no cause to embark on such an experiment now."
Ginsburg told the law school audience that judicial independence "has proved superior to any alternative form of discharging the judicial function that has ever been tried or conceived. It would be folly to squander this priceless constitutional gift to placate the clamors of benighted political partisans."
Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.
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Justice Ginsburg, I have a question. Please explain to those of us who are not lawyers how it is we can protect ourselves from judges who think the Constitution is a living document and must be expanded and revised to meet the needs of an ever changing world?
Followup question: Why do you think the opinion of someone who is not legally trained is somehow less valid than someone who is legally trained? Your comments presuppose what I consider to be an elitist attitude that the judicial/legal-financial complex is better qualified to "rule" America than a bug exterminator. Frankly Justice Ginsburg, I'd trust a Texas bug exterminator to enact legislation long before I'd trust someone with a judicial/legal background.
Justice Ginsburg Snipes at Rep. DeLay
NewsMax.com Wires
Saturday, Feb. 3, 2001
WASHINGTON – Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told an Australian audience Thursday that public confidence in the U.S. judiciary would survive the Supreme Court decision that decided the presidential election, and she took a verbal swing at House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.
The transcript of her speech was released Friday at the Supreme Court. The justices are in the middle of a four-week recess.
"Whatever final judgment awaits Bush vs. Gore in the annals of history," Ginsburg told the University of Melbourne Law School, "I am certain that the good work and good faith of the U.S. federal judiciary as a whole will continue to sustain public confidence at a level never beyond repair."
Besides offering that indirect criticism, Ginsburg gave an account of the process that led to the Supreme Court's decision Dec. 12 that ended hand recounts in Florida, ensuring that President Bush would win that state's electoral votes and the White House.
Ginsburg was among the minority in the 5-4 decision.
Her comments on DeLay were more pointed in the speech, titled "Remarks on Judicial Independence." Direct criticism of members of Congress by Supreme Court justices is almost unprecedented.
"One powerful member of the U.S. Congress, Tom DeLay, has advocated the impeachment of judges who render unpopular decisions that, in his view, do not follow the law," Ginsburg said. "Mr. DeLay, who is not a lawyer but, I'm told, an exterminator by profession, placed on his list of judicial pests a district court judge in San Antonio, Texas, who held up certification of the election of two Republican victors in races for county sheriff and county commissioner."
The judge removed the stay after a state court determined that military absentee ballots were valid.
"In justification of his effort to expand the use of impeachment, Congressman DeLay commented that federal judges 'need to be intimidated,' " Ginsburg said.
"If Mr. DeLay's initiative should come to pass, then I suppose I might someday end up on his list of impeachment targets. ... Unnerving as such threats may be," Ginsburg said, "I think the New York Times columnist Bob Herbert got it right when he said in a December 2000 column, 'an intimidated judge is a worthless judge.' "
Ginsburg also criticized Congress' tactics in delaying, and in some cases never acting on, former President Clinton's judicial nominees.
"In addition to threats of impeachment, recent congressional attacks on judicial independence have included what can fairly be described as political hazing of federal judicial nominees," she said, and called for streamlined treatment in the new Congress.
"… It remains to be seen how President Bush, facing a Senate evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, will fare with his judicial nominees," Ginsburg said. "Yet whatever the party division in Congress, the performance of the federal judiciary depends critically, as I see it, on efforts to streamline the nomination and confirmation process."
Ginsburg attacked a proposal by former appellate judge Robert Bork, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was derailed in 1987 by Senate Democrats, that a constitutional amendment be adopted to allow a majority of Congress to overturn court rulings.
"The founders of the United States never envisioned a rule of law based on pure majoritarianism," Ginsburg said. "And I see no cause to embark on such an experiment now."
Ginsburg told the law school audience that judicial independence "has proved superior to any alternative form of discharging the judicial function that has ever been tried or conceived. It would be folly to squander this priceless constitutional gift to placate the clamors of benighted political partisans."
Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.
_________________________________
Justice Ginsburg, I have a question. Please explain to those of us who are not lawyers how it is we can protect ourselves from judges who think the Constitution is a living document and must be expanded and revised to meet the needs of an ever changing world?
Followup question: Why do you think the opinion of someone who is not legally trained is somehow less valid than someone who is legally trained? Your comments presuppose what I consider to be an elitist attitude that the judicial/legal-financial complex is better qualified to "rule" America than a bug exterminator. Frankly Justice Ginsburg, I'd trust a Texas bug exterminator to enact legislation long before I'd trust someone with a judicial/legal background.