Constitution Killers
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Political Hay
By George Neumayr
Published 3/3/2005 1:09:11 AMThe Supreme Court's judicial activists are cutting off the branch on which they sit. By rejecting the law and putting their personal opinions in its place, the justices invite the people to imitate them and disregard their decrees with the same willfulness they disregard the Constitution. If Anthony Kennedy isn't bound by the framers' words, why are the people bound by his?
The authority of Supreme Court justices derives from the authority of the Constitution: once they deny its authority, they deny their own. The Roper v. Simmons decision is a stunningly stark illustration of this despotism that masquerades as jurisprudence. Despotism is not an overwrought description here: we are dealing with a lawless court, judges who obey no law save their own will. Yes, they invoke a living Constitution, but that just means the real Constitution lies dead at their feet, having been trampled beneath a juggernaut of false progress.
The Supreme Court has been holding a de facto constitutional convention for decades, ripping up the old one and writing a new one without the consent of the people. A fitting punishment for this act of hubris will come when the chaos that their own example of lawlessness has set in motion consumes them in impeachment trials or worse.
The justices conceal their despotism in rhetoric and flat-out lying. As Antonin Scalia demonstrated in his dissenting opinion, the "national consensus" that the justices cite to justify the decision doesn't exist. Kennedy and company did a shoddy job of lining up this lie, first inventing a national consensus against executing 17-year olds, then conceding that it doesn't exist by whining about America's refusal to ratify international treaties that forbid the practice.
As the Supreme Court writes a new constitution, the justices are using as their co-authors foreigners not Americans. This now routine reliance on foreign fashions illustrates their alienation from and distrust of the American people. In citing the "overwhelming weight of international opinion" in the Roper decision, the justices are in effect saying to the American people: we are right, you are wrong; since you won't support our boutique views, we will look abroad for support.
The justices spoke of "evolving standards of decency," which means evolving standards of indecency. And they speak about these standards as if they are just reporting their existence rather than pushing them into existence through judicial decree. The judges are not neutral reporters of fact but agents of activism, full of elitist disdain at the American people for not changing the standards themselves.
"Evolving standards of decency" in the world that the justices inhabit doesn't mean children aren't killed. It just means they have a better chance of surviving if they are guilty and dangerous. The resources the elite won't spend on unborn children they will lavish upon teenage monsters. Through some perverse inversion of values -- impossible to outline scientifically given the off-the-wall willfulness of liberalism -- unborn children can be killed according to the liberal elite's most crass utilitarian calculus imaginable while a 17-year-old menace is cosseted like a baby.
The same judges who infantilize teen murderers encourage parents and schools to furnish teens with condoms, and should those condoms fail parents, according to judges, should let their teens, as responsible young people with searching consciences, decide on their own whether to apply evolving standards of decency to unwanted children growing within them during visits to their local Planned Parenthood.
Nor is the posture of casting teens as innocent waifs one the justices ever strike in censorship cases. Indeed, a teens-know-best attitude runs through much of the Rousseauian Enlightenment thinking of the Court. From designing their own curriculum at New Age high schools to ruminating over the contraceptive menus supplied to them by administrators, teens operate like adults in the evolved culture that the Court seeks to spread.
The Court's conveniently patronizing description of 17-year-olds in the Roper decision would have been news to Americans at the time of the Constitution's ratification: for them, many of whom didn't live to be 40, 17 was practically middle age. Since the justices maintain the practice of never consulting for the meaning of the Constitution the framers who actually wrote it, they made sure not to include in Roper the number of 17-year-old murderers executed at the time of the country's founding. The Supreme Court has zero interest in the America of the founders, indeed looks longingly to the Europe that the framers left for co-authorship in forming a new Constitution to supplant the framers' one. What Anthony Kennedy calls cultural evolution looks more like regression -- a return to the tyrannies of Enlightenment Europe.
George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator.Copyright 2005, The American Spectator
The new age Supreme Court
townhall.com
David LimbaughMarch 4, 2005
The Supreme Court's decision barring execution of murderers who commit their crime before age 18 as cruel and unusual punishment is not only fundamentally flawed, but also deeply troubling -- for more than just a few reasons.
In its 5-4 decision on March 1, the Court decreed that "Juveniles are less mature than adults and, no matter how heinous their crimes, they are not among 'the worst offenders' who deserve to die."
While I certainly respect that opinion, I strongly object to the United States Supreme Court presuming to impose it on our entire society as if it is the final arbiter not just of the law, but our moral standards.
Adding insult to injury, the Court doesn't even deny its staggering presumptuousness. In the words of the ever-disappointing Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, "To implement this framework we have established the propriety and affirmed the necessity of referring to 'the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society' to determine which punishments are so disproportionate as to be cruel and unusual."
How much more explicit could the Court be in affirming the shifting, baseless standards of moral relativism? Quite a far cry, is it not, from a Constitutional and legal system grounded in the absolute standards emanating from the Judeo-Christian ethic?
Forget the merits of the Court's position in light of the rampant licentiousness that pervades our postmodern era. Such questions can be debated. But are you comfortable with the highest court of the land issuing a binding pronouncement that we have evolving standards of decency?
What business is it of the Court's to make such broad sweeping determinations having nothing whatever to do with law? Besides, I thought liberals objected to the "legislation" of morality, which is precisely what is involved here. The Court, in its colossal arrogance, is rejecting the biblical view of the inherent depravity of human nature in favor of the humanistic, New Age precept that humankind is progressing on a linear path to enlightenment.
As if its endorsement of moral relativism were not enough, the Court went on to misapply its own guidelines in interpreting what society's "evolving" moral standards happen to be at this time. As Justice Scalia noted in his dissent, these societal standards are to be gleaned by reference to a national consensus, which in turn is to be determined by an objective standard: the statutes passed by society's elected representatives.
But for the Court to overturn its own precedents, such as the ones allowing execution in these cases, it must find not just a national consensus against the practice, but an overwhelming one. Instead, the evidence showed that only 18 of the 38 states that allow capital punishment have outlawed such executions -- hardly a consensus, much less an overwhelming one. Indeed, if an overwhelming national consensus has in fact emerged, why has the Court decided to preempt juries -- who presumably embody that consensus -- in these cases?
What it boils down to is that the Court substituted its own judgment for that of the people. In so doing, the Court, as Justice Scalia also cogently demonstrated, cherry-picked the evidence and ignored that contrary to its desired findings.
As just one example, the Court accepted the American Psychological Association's (APA) claim that "scientific evidence shows persons under 18 lack the ability to take moral responsibility for their decisions." But this same APA made a completely contradictory claim in a case previously considered by the Court, in which it argued that there is a "rich body of research" proving that juveniles are capable of deciding whether to get an abortion without parental advice.
Regardless, I would much rather juries in our local communities making these determinations than five of nine self-appointed black-robed moral arbiters, especially considering that under current law, juries are required to take into account the murderer's age as a mitigating factor. If local juries can be entrusted with determining whether such children should be convicted of murder, why can't they decide whether they should be executed?
There is at least an additional column's worth of other problems with the Court's decision, such as its obscene, arbitrary and opportunistically convenient reference to foreign standards, and its misanalysis of the deterrence argument. I also note the incredible irony of the Court -- in the process of proclaiming itself the final moral arbiter -- undermining its own authority in rewarding, instead of reprimanding, the Missouri Supreme Court for flagrantly ignoring its (the United States Supreme Court's) precedents.
The Court's disturbing decision underscores the growing relevance and urgency of my friend Mark Levin's "Men In Black," which I respectfully urge you again to purchase.
David Limbaugh is a syndicated columnist who blogs at DavidLimbaugh.com
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact David Limbaugh | Read Limbaugh's biography
The Supreme Court's decision barring execution of murderers who commit their crime before age 18 as cruel and unusual punishment is not only fundamentally flawed, but also deeply troubling -- for more than just a few reasons. In its 5-4 decision on March 1, the Court decreed that "Juveniles are less mature than adults and, no matter how heinous their crimes, they are not among 'the worst offenders' who deserve to die."
Comments:
Reply 1 - Posted by: luckydog, 3/4/2005 1:52:40 AM
Makes perfect sence to me.
We cannot, no matter how terrible and evil their crimes, execute murderers if they are smart enough to commit their crimes before their 18th birthday.
Yet, women have the constitutional right to murder their child in the womb AT ANY TIME for any reason!
Is this who we want telling us how this nation will conduct it's business?
Are these corrupt judges going to lead this nation or will we stand them down?
Your representatives in Congress have the means to deal with these rogue judges. However, the political wimps of both parties will not move or speak unless they hear from enough of us.
Reply 2 - Posted by: wk, 3/4/2005 2:02:34 AM
Cruel and unusual murderers deserve cruel and unusual punishment. Nuff said.
Reply 3 - Posted by: gloria, 3/4/2005 2:46:00 AM
This court is going to be the reason a wholesale, earthshaking change in the Supreme Court will take place. Term limits for justices. This will have to be ratified by 2/3 of the States, since it will necessitate a change in the Constitution, but their decisions are riling the citizens and it is entirely possible. We natives are getting restless!
Reply 4 - Posted by: Melody, 3/4/2005 3:11:15 AM
The court defers to what they called ''the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.'' They're not talking about evolution but devolution. As Mr. Limbaugh so aptly states, ''Quite a far cry, is it not, from a Constitutional and legal system grounded in the absolute standards emanating from the Judeo-Christian ethic?''
Our Founder Fathers had it right. There's nothing quite like the ignorance it takes to cut out the ground on which one is standing.
I am grateful to the Lord for giving us a David Limbaugh to so succinctly speak these truths.
Reply 5 - Posted by: reddog, 3/4/2005 3:15:06 AM
#3, I agree that the Pubbies need to cobble together enough courage to limit the terms of these senile old fossils at the least. It is far better to put some sane limits on their jurisdiction. It will happen eventually, one way or another. At present, there is no aspect of American life into which these demigod wannabes can't and won't intrude.
Reply 6 - Posted by: Ida Lil, 3/4/2005 3:39:10 AM
In an age where juvenelles were not subjected to every kind of desensitising action possible juvs didn't commit many crimes that merited a death sentence.
No matter how angry we are there is still something sorrowful about watching a 13 year old tried as an adult especialy when they have been taught no values or morals.
Time was when we removed children from depraved homes. Now we don't even have enough courage to impose morality on their parents .
Reply 7 - Posted by: wrw90, 3/4/2005 4:54:10 AM
It's hard to disagree with David on anything, but I do have one nitpick.
He falls into agreement with Scalia on the logic of counting only the 18 states that have outlawed juvenile executions of 38 states allowing capital punishment as hardly indicative of a consensus.
In truth, 30 of the 50 states (60%) do not allow capital punishment of juveniles. It is irrelevant whether or not they allow capital punishment of others.
The 60% figure tells us that there is a growing trend against capital punishment in this country. That's a fact, and Scalia's manipulating of state statistics won't change it.
Limbaugh's other indictments of the SCOTUS decision by the loopy liberal majority are right on target.
