Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The more things change....

Closest that clown is ever gonna get....

The only problem with this:
the blog is right in its long-held belief that an elected judiciary is the second-worst idea in American politics behind the balanced-budget amendment

is this:
Wallace B. Jefferson, the chief justice since 2004 and a relative moderate by Texas standards, stepped down earlier this year, which gave Governor Rick Perry a chance to fill the vacancy.
Perry appointed Nathan Hecht, the subject of Toomey's article in the New Yorker, which in turn is the reason Mr. Pierce wrote his blog post.   If we didn't elect our judges, governors like Perry would appoint 'em.  And I wouldn't trust the Lege as far as I could throw it to impeach judges appointed for life (the only way to get around people like Perry being in office for 12 years and having the run of the place), or resisting impeaching judges they just didn't like.

I don't know what the solution is, to be honest.  But the Supreme Court has been radically conservative since before Nathan Hecht was an Associate Justice, and when Rick Perry was still Agriculture Commissioner.

My only comfort is that it won't do a thing for Perry's GOP Presidential nominee chances.  He doesn't have any.

1 comment:

  1. It's a gamble but the only thing I can think of is to have a limited term for judges and a legally binding series of regulations. Scalia has proven that it is essential to define conflict of interest and to make violating it an impeachable offense. Kagan, on the other hand, has shown the folly of appointing someone who recuses herself at the drop of a hat.

    Electing only honorable people to office is the root of the problem and that's the product of moral conviction. I know it's about as unfashionable a thing as it is possible to say, but I think even as much good as we were able to have in government and judging was entirely dependent on an effective margin of moral decency being at least an aspiration of a majority of The People and that was directly related to their belief that they were required to aspire to it. And that is dependent on religious belief. We've had an experiment with the alternative and it doesn't work.

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