- Jan 12, 2012
- 27,286
- 113
Whenever the Supreme Court rules on a contentious issue, we have the same basic scenario. Some people find it perfectly satisfactory, some are indignant, and others yet are indifferent. Frequently those responses depend more upon personal gratification than the rule of law.
This reliably leads into an argument on the Supreme Court having the last word without considering the implications of the system itself being broken as demonstrated with far too many bad rulings which clearly oppose the Constitution. When this happens, the standard argument is that those complaining are not constitutional scholars, overlooking the fact that the document was written to be perfectly clear. Instead, we are told that it is archaic, doesn't necessarily apply to the modern world, is a 'living' (changing on whim) document, or requires esoteric knowledge to correctly interpret it, finding that it doesn't mean what it clearly says and conversely means things that are nowhere to be found but in the imagination of the person interpreting things into the spaces between the lines.
The Supreme Court should be the last defense when the Congress and President overstep their bounds. John Roberts and his exquisitely lame opinion on ObamaCare have clearly demonstrated that we cannot rely on the Supremes in even the most egregious of cases. It seems that we are now facing the next level in the game--the states telling the federal government to go pound sand. One wonders how it is going to work out.
This reliably leads into an argument on the Supreme Court having the last word without considering the implications of the system itself being broken as demonstrated with far too many bad rulings which clearly oppose the Constitution. When this happens, the standard argument is that those complaining are not constitutional scholars, overlooking the fact that the document was written to be perfectly clear. Instead, we are told that it is archaic, doesn't necessarily apply to the modern world, is a 'living' (changing on whim) document, or requires esoteric knowledge to correctly interpret it, finding that it doesn't mean what it clearly says and conversely means things that are nowhere to be found but in the imagination of the person interpreting things into the spaces between the lines.
The Supreme Court should be the last defense when the Congress and President overstep their bounds. John Roberts and his exquisitely lame opinion on ObamaCare have clearly demonstrated that we cannot rely on the Supremes in even the most egregious of cases. It seems that we are now facing the next level in the game--the states telling the federal government to go pound sand. One wonders how it is going to work out.
