Another Addition To The Pantheon Of Exceedingly Bad Ideas

Here I was trying to avoid politics tonight, and I found one of the most singularly bad ideas I have ever seen proposed by a member of Congress. It violates the most important basic premise of our nation - that each of the three branches of government is governed by a system of checks and balances.

For the short version, Congressman Lewis of Kentucky has introduced a bill to the House that would allow Congress, with a supermajority vote, to overrule findings of the Supreme Court.

I'll agree with the Congressman that judicial activism has gone too far and we need to find a way to reign it in. But is the gutting of the Constitutional seperation of powers the best way to go? Not a chance in hell.

There are two checks on the power of the Legislature written into the Constitution. First, the President (or the Executive branch) can veto the law. That check is not an absolute one, however, with the ability of Congress to override the veto with a, here's an interesting suprise, supermajority vote. The Supreme Court has a more limited scope of things that they can examine, but a contrary Supreme Court ruling has always had the effect of scrapping the law.

If Congress thought the law to be necessary anyways, they have always had the Amendment process available to them to overrule the Supreme Court, but an Amendment requires the buyin of the states.

This bill would essentially circumvent the Amendment process.

First of all, I strongly believe that a simple law will not be enough to put this in force. It changes the basic structure of the Constitution. That, by definition, should require an Amendment.

Second off, I don't believe that we should put that much power into the hands of any one branch. Even the Imperial Judiciary doesn't have this much power. This law would put us at the mercy of a tyranny of the Congress.

Passing this law would take away any pretense of a need for responsible action on the part of Congress. No longer would they be bound by the constaints of checks and balances: they wouldn't have any.

This bill likely has no chance of going anywhere, but I think that its introduction raises some pretty serious red flags. We are going too far in the other direction in our quest to save the country from the Judiciary.

We have to find the proper balance. I don't know what the ultimate answer will be, but I know that this should not be it.

Replacing one tyranny with another is pretty unproductive, all in all.