|
Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison joins Texas Sen. John Cornyn in opposition to Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor. [Houston Chronicle]
Hutchison announced Tuesday that she would vote no on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor when the full Senate holds Sotomayor's confirmation vote next week. Sen. Hutchison expressed concern about Sotomayor's statement at a Duke University law school forum four years ago that legal “policy” was made by federal appeals courts. “I believe judges should interpret the law, not make it,” Hutchison said in a statement issued late Tuesday.
(KERA audio) At a Dallas press conference, Sen. Hutchison blamed illegal immigrants for making Texas the national leader in uninsured residents while bashing Pres. Obama's Healthcare reform, presumably to bolster her credentials with the far right conservative base. But hospital officials and state statistics don't back her up. Sen. Cornyn also opposes Pres. Obama's Healthcare reform.
Conservatives like Hutchison and Cornyn continue to press their so called "strict constructionist" constitutional argument, that judges, like Judge Sotomayer, who make decisions based on "constitutional principles" carried in the words, rather than application of the exact words, written in the constitution are liberal activist judges who legislate from the bench.Of course, the Constitution, as written, does not prohibit, in exact word, a legislative body at the state or federal level from segregating schools as separate but equal "white only" and "black only" institutions, but the Supreme Court did find such laws unconstitutional in the court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision. In Brown the court found that the language of the constitution defines principles that segregation deprives segregated citizens of their equal protection under the "due process of law" as granted in the 14th Amendment. So Brown was a case where the judges "made law."
The GOP is on the record as opposing the court's finding that the language of the constitution defines a principle that American citizens have a general "right of privacy" to be left alone without government intrusion. The court's 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut "right of privacy" finding is the decision that legalized the sale and use of birth control pills and other contraceptive options in the United States. The court's "right to privacy" finding also gives parents the right to home school or send their children to private school. Griswold is another case where the judges "made law."
When Republican Senators like Cornyn and Hutchison say they oppose judges who "make law," they state their opposition to the court's so called "activist" decisions on a broad range of social rights that include child rearing, procreation, interracial marriage, contraception, private and home schooling rights and civil rights equality.
Related Post:
No comments:
Post a Comment