Earlier this week, President Obama predicted that the Supreme Court would uphold the constitutionality of healthcare reform legislation, saying it would be unprecedented that “an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.”
And now Republicans and the Right and even sitting judges are throwing tantrums, accusing Obama of attempting to “intimidate” the Supreme Court.
Can we just point out that one of the central platforms [PDF] of Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign was that he was literally going to arrest federal judges who issued rulings that he didn’t like and ignore Supreme Court decisions with which he disagreed?
Oddly, nobody on the Right uttered a peep when Gingrich made those threats … nor did they voice any outrage back in 2007 when President George W. Bush addressed the Federalist Society and warned that unelected judges legislating from the bench represented a “threat to our democracy”:
When the Founders drafted the Constitution, they had a clear understanding of tyranny. They also had a clear idea about how to prevent it from ever taking root in America. Their solution was to separate the government’s powers into three co-equal branches: the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. Each of these branches plays a vital role in our free society. Each serves as a check on the others. And to preserve our liberty, each must meet its responsibilities — and resist the temptation to encroach on the powers the Constitution accords to others.
For the judiciary, resisting this temptation is particularly important, because it’s the only branch that is unelected and whose officers serve for life. Unfortunately, some judges give in to temptation and make law instead of interpreting. Such judicial lawlessness is a threat to our democracy — and it needs to stop.
