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January 30, 2007
Supreme Court TV? A Separation-of-Powers Interruption
So, does the Legislative Branch have the constitutional authority -- under the Necessary-and-Proper Clause, I presume -- to tell the constitutionally created Supreme Court how to run its proceedings? Congress sets the number of Justices. Congress has controlled the Supreme Court's appellate docket in the past, forcing the Court to hear cases (subject to the "substantial federal question" card). Congress promulgates the rules that govern the Supreme Court's operations. Congress appropriates the money for law clerks.
The First and Sixth amendments ensure public access to judicial proceedings. So at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that the Supreme Court will have argument-day walk-ups siting in the gallery -- absent a compelling need for secrecy. And there's nothing in the Constitution that would seem to prohibit a law requiring televised SCOTUS proceedings.
But let's say Congress passes such a law, and the president signs it.
What if SCOTUS won't comply, saying that for all things ministerial, they're the "deciders"? What's Congress going to do, reduce the number of number of Justices who can hear a case? Not fund their law clerks? How 'bout pass a non-binding resolution condemning the Justices' decision?
Frankly, I'd much rather see Senator Specter devote his time to explaining just what the hell he was thinking when he slipped into the Patriot Act renewel that little jewel of legislation allowing the Attorney General to fire U.S. Attorneys and replace them "temporarily" forever . . . that is, until the A.G. changes his or her mind or a new administration takes office.
Posted by shertaugh at January 30, 2007 9:18 AM
Comments
Since when does SCOTUS give a rat's heinie about what Congress says? If they REALLY don't like a law, they will rewrite it to suit their purposes. Perhaps the most famous case in point is Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547 (1967), wherein they summarily declared that "any person" really meant "any person but us corrupt judges."
After that decision, it no longer mattered what Congress said, or even what Congress intended. In that instant, our law was transformed into an Alice-in-Wonderland world, where words only mean what a judge needs them to mean on that day, at that time. To disregard the plain meaning and intent of a statute without a compelling reason to do so would be, as Justice Sutherland observed a generation before, "to enact a law under the pretense of construing one, [and thereby, pronounce that court] guilty of a flagrant perversion of the judicial power." Well, that is the short definition of our modern courts. Let's be candid about it: we are living under a regime, engendered by a judicial coup d'etat.
If they don't want cameras in the courtroom, they won't let cameras into the courtroom. Period.
Posted by: Suitably Appalled at February 4, 2007 8:54 AM