Agent Monkeysee on 25/3/2006 at 07:19
Quote Posted by Jennie&Tim
Is there a way for a Justice to be removed or does Congress need to rewrite the laws or constitution more stringently to fix the problems these justices seem bound to cause?
Congress can kick 'em out if they get uppity. The procedure may even be called impeachment, though I don't recall.
Rug Burn Junky on 25/3/2006 at 15:53
dg: Is that truly a problem with the opinions, or the article itself? I read the same article, and it seemed to me that it was a story about the relationships on the new court, rather than the opinion. While the disagreement over the "reasonableness" was a focus of the article, I got the impression that it was only a component of the opinions, and, indeed, the petty squabbling was just in the footnotes, and blown out of all proportion in the article. Haven't read the opinion itself, so I could be minimizing it, but I take that as more of a sensationalist, and politicized, news article, and I might be taking it for granted that the opinon itself would sell it better legally.
J&T: The article I saw even had a mention that Stevens took the conservatives to task for straying from what should be an obvious original construction. I don't think it really is straying from the actual legal philosophy that any of these men have (which, in a political sense, does tend toward an expansive view of police power compatible with conservative "tough on crime" stance). It's only an inconsistency between what they publicly misstate about their ideology, and what they've done in practice all along.
As for "stopping" them? While I don't recall the details firsthand about removing a sitting SC justice, I find it extraordinarily unlikely that that would ever happen. It's simply not ever going to be politically expedient.
The time to stop them was when Bush nominated Roberts and Alito, because each were fairly obviously political extremists and the nominations should have been vetted far better. Sadly, most of the public just didn't care then, and if there wasn't even enough support for an obviously warranted filibuster of Alito, there just ain't no way that the more drastic step of trying to yank one off the bench for ideological reasons is going to fly.
While I do worry about what damage they can cause, in the long run I do have faith that good legal sense will win out over short term ideology. Constitutional Law tends to be self correcting that way.
Jennie&Tim on 29/3/2006 at 03:37
<i>Starts hoping that someone will come up with authenticated video of a backroom party for the conservative block with Anna Nicole Smith doing a striptease.</I>
Bet you could get the public interested for that!
Fingernail on 29/3/2006 at 16:09
Quote Posted by Agent Monkeysee
Hey hey RBJ how many kids did you kill today
You read my mind like a cheap magazine.
