The last proposal of the previous article came to my mind when I saw in recent years a couple of cases in which a Supreme Court Justice recused himself due to some personal connection with a party before The Court. Those decisions were then made by a majority of liberals! Why? Because ONLY Conservatives would ever have the decency to think that they need to recuse themselves. Liberals on The Supreme Court would and will NEVER recuse themselves. They would and do jump at the opportunity to advance the liberal agenda. When a Supreme Court Justice recuses himself, who can fill in for him? All lower courts allow for a replacement judge to fill in. But S. Ct. liberal Justices probably marvel at the golden opportunities handed to them on silver platters whenever a Conservative Justice weenies out on them and leaves the battlefield to the enemy.
The question of whether a Justice can be impeached and removed has never been completely clear and defined. Yes, they serve as long as they want "on good behaviour". But what does "good behaviour" mean? Politically correct ideology maybe? Could a situation someday exist where The White House, House, and Senate are so fanatically controlled by one party that they impeach and remove all Justices who have an opposing ideology because their ideology is not "good behaviour" and not good for America? Maybe they would only need to remove ONE such Justice, enough to tip the balance in their favor. Maybe they could impeach him on trumped up charges. Maybe somebody could wright a really cool novel along those lines.
As socialism began to rise in our country since the 1930s, socialists (aka liberals) have recognized the Achilles heel that our Supreme Court poses. It is like a major hole in the enemy lines (us) that a decisive socialist general can run his army through. And speaking of The American Civil War (as I was with that last analogy) The Confedeate Constitution attempted to remedy weaknesses (in the U.S. Const.) that were already glaringly obvious by 1861. It was basically an adoption of the Federal one, but with a few changes. The document said almost nothing about a Supreme Court except to leave it open for creation at a later date. The lack of a Court reveals that the Southern leaders had no answer yet for it's problems, but agreed that the Federal one had been weak and problematic. If the Federal Court had ruled one way or another on the issue of whether a state could secede, war might have been avoided. The case was appealed to The Court more than once, but the Justices dropped the ball and chickened out. The Southern politicians argued and tabled each attempt to set up a Court over the next four years. And so, they never had a Supreme Court.
The Southern Constitution did have one change that I wish ours had -- it added more ways to amend the document. Our Constitution allows ONLY the House and Senate to introduce amendments and submit them to the States. If Congressmen get so entrenched in their cushy jobs as ours now are, WE THE PEOPLE have no real way to root them out via term limits. We need to "drain the swamp" as Jerry Doyle says. The Confederate Constitution had the same method, but added that any State Legislature could also draw up Amendments to be submitted to all the other States for consideration. This allowed for at least SOME greater innovation since new, fresh ideas could come from 24 origins ( 11 States with 2 houses each plus the central House and Senate) rather than from just 2. By the way, The Confederate Constitution had term limits built in for all in national office. President Jefferson Davis was limited to ONE 6-year term, for example.
--Ray Curtis, Houston, TX, Tuesday August 18, 2009
REFERENCES:
The South Was Right, Kennedy & Kennedy, Pelican, 1994
Dixie Betrayed, David Eicher, Little Brown, 2006