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Agenda Judges

Posted on November 8th, 2010 by Staks

Last Tuesday was Election Day and I spent the entire day at the polls as Minority Election Inspector. Toward the end of the day after the polls had closed, I got into a short conversation with a Republican poll watcher who was hanging out waiting for the results. The topic was on the role of Judges and she got schooled.

This woman had commented about “judicial activism” by stating something along the lines that “Republicans need to stop judges from overturning the will of the people.” She kind of mumbled it and didn’t expect to be challenged on it. But I couldn’t resist.

I told her that it was the job of judges to strike down unconstitutional laws. The people can’t for example make a law that says that only blue eyed people can vote. She agreed and then I said that gay marriage is the same thing. That shut her up.

The thing is that the Right Wing has coined the phrase “Judicial Activist” and the real issue is “Agenda Judges.” We have judges on the Supreme Court now that don’t need to even hear a case before they have already decided that it doesn’t fit their agenda. They don’t need to look at previous case law, the Constitution, or how the law will affect actual people. Instead, laws are now decided either by the Justice’s religious beliefs or their corporate agenda.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of hearing Michael Newdow discuss some of the Church/State cases he had been and will be involved in. He talked about how even though some of the Supreme Court Justices understood that certain things were violations of the Constitutional principle of Separation of Church and State, they still upheld that agenda because it would affect their own religious sensibilities.

I guess my point today is that we ought to start labeling these judges as Agenda Judges in much the same way that the Right Wing labels judges that do their job as “Activist Judges.”