Partial To The Constitution
By David N. Bass (11/20/05)
Even before President Bush nominated Judge Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court, liberals were pounding the Appellate Court judge as an individual who would bring an unacceptably biased view of the judiciary to the nation’s top court. One need not look far for evidence. Shortly after President Bush announced his new pick, the president of People for the American Way, Ralph Neas, remarked that Judge Alito “has a record of ideological activism” in opposition to a number of pet liberal causes. Not to be outdone by any of its sister liberal groups, the National Organization for Women chimed in with similar rhetoric, calling Judge Alito a “judicial extremist.”
The nagging doesn’t stop with Judge Alito, either. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi recently said that a move by Republicans in Congress to pass legislation splitting the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals into two separate circuits constituted an assault on “an independent judiciary.”
Regardless of the liberal organization or individual, we hear the same tired mantra: Ideological conservatives should not be appointed to the court because they are “extremists” and inappropriately tip the scales of an “independent judiciary.” According to the liberal political machine, members of the court must approach each case with an “open mind,” a stipulation that essentially means each judge must possess a “living Constitution” mindset and a radical left view of jurisprudence. Such a mentality requires that the wording of the Constitution be transformed to suit the personal stance taken by a particular judge.
This is the core counterattack facing conservative judicial nominees. If a judge or justice dares to rule on what the Constitution actually says as opposed to what liberals wish it said, he is derided as a judicial extremist. On the other hand, a judge who bases decisions on foreign law, or on language somehow implied by the Constitution, is a fair-minded, unbiased individual.
Without question, each member of the judiciary must be free of partiality and bias, approaching each case by what the law and Constitution say as opposed to the latest whims of society. But liberals take that one step further by contending that judges and justices must essentially be free of partiality to the wording and original intent of the Constitution itself. Any other view of the law constitutes extremism.
But what is so extreme about taking the words of the Constitution and basing rulings on what they actually say? Amazingly, liberals will claim that a well-reasoned, constitutionally sound judicial decision that happens to rule in favor of the sanctity of life or marriage is biased. Yet in the same breath, they will contend, as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor already has, that foreign law should play an important role in American jurisprudence. Under this view of the law, jurists can pull anything they want out of the proverbial judicial hat, including so-called rights to homosexual marriage, seizure of private property, and infanticide, all of which are outside the confines of original intent and constitutional integrity.
Given the sordid record liberals have when it comes to the judiciary, who are the real extremists? Interestingly, much ado is made in liberal circles about the danger of nominating jurists to the court who interpret the words of the Constitution literally, yet these same individuals are the first to favor judicial bias so long as that bias aligns itself with a so-called evolving interpretation of the Constitution.
The hypocrisy could not be more obvious.
In the end, the issue is not about nominating an impartial nominee to the court, but in choosing the right type of partiality. Is the nominee partial to the rule of law and the original intent of the Constitution, or to the latest societal moors and whims of the liberal elite? Is he a strict constructionist, or does he subscribe to the theory that butchering a baby minutes before birth is somehow deemed a right to privacy protected in the Constitution? Will he interpret the law to respect citizens’ private property, or allow for the seizure of such property in favor of other private interests generating more tax dollars. Will he uphold parental rights, or peddle the notion that public schools usurp parental authority when it comes to teaching about human sexuality?
Unfortunately for liberals, the President of the United States has the privilege of answering such questions by nominating an individual to the court who matches Constitutional judicial philosophy. Just as Clinton hit a home run for liberals in nominating Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court in 1993, so now President Bush has the opportunity to send someone up who will reflect the judicial philosophy of those Constitution honoring conservatives who put Bush in office in the first place.
The fact of the matter is that we need more partiality towards the Constitution among the judges and justices of America’s courts. No other nation in history has produced such a document, and dire consequences will result if we trash its integrity in our modern era of moral relativism. Conservatives have been given a chance to tip the balance of the Supreme Court in favor of the document that each member of the court is sworn to uphold and protect, and it is our God given responsibility to make certain that happens.
Copyright 2005 by David N. Bass
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