07/22/09 - Doug Casey on Judging Justices
Doug Casey on Judging Justices
L: Doug, you wrote in an email that you?ve been shaking your head over the latest antics of Supreme Court nomination and appointment. Care to tell us why?
Doug: Well, the whole thing is a pointless circus. The whole uproar over the ?wise Latina? remark is irrelevant, and all the hours of intense scrutiny people are devoting to examining the alleged thoughts of Sotomayor are a waste of time. It serves absolutely no useful purpose whatsoever.
L: None whatsoever? Wouldn't it matter if a justice got in who might be more harmful than another to the economy or civil liberties?
Besides, the Supreme Court has drifted so far from what it?s supposed to do that the court itself doesn?t matter.
The Supreme Court has a very simple mission; it?s supposed to safeguard the Constitution. The U.S. Constitution and its first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) were adopted and ratified simultaneously. Though imperfect, it?s actually a pretty clear and easy-to-understand document. All a Supreme Court justice should have to do is read the Constitution to see if the law in question is constitutional, in other words, falls within the authority spelled out in the Constitution. It?s that simple, and it doesn?t take a lawyer ? in fact, a lawyer?s training, with all its emphasis on precedent and interpretation, is the exact opposite of what you want in a Supreme Court justice.
So the weight of precedent and so-called law that has built up over the years is basically junk. Most decisions reflect not what the Constitution says, or even what?s equitable, but the political views of the judges ? who are all political appointees.
The vast majority of the Supreme Court?s precedent should be scrapped. They should start from scratch, and with a copy of the Constitution in hand, and strike down any law that the Constitution does not specifically authorize. Article One, Section 8, makes it absolutely clear that any powers not given to the government in the Constitution are reserved to the states and to the people. Amendments 9 and 10 of the Bill of Rights reinforce that. But they?re completely disregarded, like everything else in that document, which was made to shield the individual against the state.
L: That would eliminate most of the federal government ? the SEC, the FDA, HEW, HUD, DOA, DOT, IRS, BATF, FBI, CIA, and who knows how many other agencies ? leaving little besides the military and the post office.
Doug: Yes, and I would go further and say that it?s not just the Supreme Court but the entire U.S. government that no longer serves any useful purpose.
Although the U.S. Constitution is perhaps the best in the world, because a) it?s very brief, and b) other than spelling out some technicalities like the number of senators per state, or that the president must be born in the U.S., it mostly describes what the government can?t do, not what it can ? and certainly not what it should. But it?s not perfect by any means.
Why, for instance, does it designate the Post Office as a function of government? In point of fact, anything that needs doing in a free society will be done by entrepreneurs, for a profit. If nobody can make a profit doing something, it?s proof the good or service isn?t wanted or needed.
The minimalist government described in the Constitution would be a vast improvement over the one we have now, which is completely counterproductive. It does the exact opposite of what is needed economically and meddles all over the world creating enemies we wouldn?t otherwise have.
But getting back to the law, the state of the law in the U.S. is ridiculous in the extreme. We have so many laws and regulations implementing them, their volumes fill entire libraries. Nobody can even read the amount churned out every day, let alone what?s been accumulated at an accelerating pace over the years. Forget about understanding the law thoroughly and being able to administer it with justice. The whole system is a farce. The saying ?Ignorance of the law is no excuse? is fatuous in today?s world.
And that?s only on a practical level. More fundamentally, one must ask: What is justice?
I?ve always liked to think about it as getting what you deserve. And what do you deserve? Only what you?ve earned. All these people who think they deserve free health care, or a job, or a plasma screen TV, simply because they radiate heat at 98.6 degrees, or because they were born in a certain place, or because they have a certain skin color ? it?s all bunk. There?s no such thing as a ?just? wage. There?s only what you earn.
