Lautenberg Blasts Attacks on Judiciary

once again, thanks to john at americablog for the tip to this excellent piece from raw story reporting on senator lautenberg's speech on the senate floor... as john so strongly puts it, "This is good stuff. We need more of it. And we need the groups to start including this message in everything they write and send." i couldn't agree more... thanks again, john

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REMARKS BY SEN. LAUTENBERG: Mr. President, I rise today to respond to some recent remarks by a member of this body, and the Majority Leader of the House, about the judges who preside in our federal courts.

Article III, Section One of the United States Constitution says:

The Judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

That seems pretty clear to me. Judicial power is vested in our courts – not in Congress.

The Constitution gives the Senate a role in the appointment of judges. We are supposed to provide advice and consent.

But once a judge is seated on the bench, his or her decisions are not subject to our approval.

And the Founding Fathers set up that way on purpose. They wanted to make sure that court decisions would be based on legal grounds - not political.

Today there is an orchestrated effort to smear the reputation of the judiciary, especially federal judges.

This effort is being waged by Republicans in Congress, as a prelude to an attempt to change the rules for confirming judicial appointments.

In order to justify the “nuclear option,” they are trying to paint judges as “activists” and “out of control.”

In reality, it is the leadership of this Congress that is out of control and endangering the future of a fair court system.

Mr. President, in this chamber yesterday, one of our colleagues said Americans are becoming “frustrated” by the rulings of judges and accused them of making “raw political or ideological decisions."

Our colleague then went on to say:

“I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public … that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence.”

These remarks are almost unbelievable.

Yet they echo the words last week of the House Majority Leader.

Speaking of the judges in the Schiavo case, the House Majority Leader said, “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

These are inflammatory words.

They ignore the fact that our Founding Fathers wanted judges to be insulated from political pressure.

And they are words that could easily incite violence against judges.

On Sunday, a columnist in the House Majority Leader’s hometown newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, wrote:

“It is time for him to stop sputtering ill-tempered threats, not only at the judiciary but also at the U.S. Constitution, which he repeatedly has sworn to uphold.”

Mr. President, to make matters worse, there have been two recent episodes involving violence against judges.

In Chicago a man fatally shot the husband and mother of a federal judge who had ruled against him in a medical malpractice suit.

And in Atlanta last month, a man broke away from a deputy and killed four people, including the judge presiding over his rape trial.

Were these judges who suffered terribly because of their official duties “activists”? Were they “out of control”?

The message being sent out to the American people by the other side of the aisle is not only irresponsible, but downright dangerous to our nation’s judges.

Like the nuclear option, the goal here is to have judges make political decisions rather than legal. They are trying to intimidate sitting judges. And they are trying to change Senate rules to get bad judges on the bench.

I vow to fight this nuclear option as well as these irresponsible threatening statements.

In my view, the true measure of democracy is how it dispenses justice.

In this country, any attempt to intimidate judges not only threatens our courts, but our fundamental democracy as well.

I call on every member of this Senate to repudiate these attacks against the federal judiciary and the United States Constitution.

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