The AP reports tonight on a televised debate between Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer on the role of foreign judicial decisions and international public opinion in US law. As noted on Power Line, this revelation from Breyer is sobering:
"U.S. law is not handed down from on high even at the U.S. Supreme Court. The law emerges from a conversation with judges, lawyers, professors and law students. ... It's what I call opening your eyes as to what's going on elsewhere."
As the modern federal judiciary legislates its corrupt morality from the bench, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that behind the issue by issue attacks there looms a fundamental collapse of constitutional law as we know it. If you think foreign cases cited in Supreme Court cases is absurd, review Lawrence v. Texas. If you think international public opinion ought to have no role in Supreme Court decisions, make sure you’re sitting down when the Court releases its Roper v. Simmons ruling in the near future.
Law does not “emerge;” it is legislated. There is a rather large clause of the Constitution devoted to that explicit process. That legislative process does not involve judges, lawyers, professors or (God help us) law students in any way, unless they have been duly elected to Congress. Here we see the utter contempt Breyer and other judges have for the Constitution they are sworn to uphold, and for the American people whose rights are protected by that Constitution. It is, in fact, judicial hegemony that “emerges,” irresolute, unpredictable but dangerous nonetheless, like a jackal from a dank, maleficent hole. The legislative process was established here to combat such degeneracy, not to enshrine it.If the judges, lawyers, professors and law students want to have a conversation, I would happily refer to them to some stimulating reading material.
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby.”
It’s what I call opening your eyes to the United States Constitution.