Chief Justice Roberts Rules In 2005, at his confirmation hearing in 2005, Chief Justice Roberts testified that he would be a “modest” chief justice. He defined “modesty” to mean “an appreciation that the role of the judge is limited, that a judge is to decide cases before then, there not to legislate, they’re not to execute the laws…. It is their job to say what the law is.” Those conclusions are consistent with what has been the cardinal guide for the court through the centuries that “stare decisis [following precedent] reflects a policy judgment that in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right.” In the 2007 case of Parents Involved v. Seattle, Roberts’s court invalidated school affirmative action programs despite that they had been consistent with previous judicial approvals, thereby silently overruling those standards. In 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller the court overruled precedent of 100 years, most recently reiterated in 1939, (Conservative Chief Justice Warren Burger often publicly concurring) that the 2nd Amendment applied only to state militia. His 5-4 vote majority ruled instead that henceforth the Second Amendment extended the right to bear arms to private citizens (and later determined this right to preempt state law as well). In 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court overruled 100 years of precedent to declare that the free speech of corporations could not be regulated separately from citizens. In 2013, this last month, Roberts’s majority overruled the fact-finding of Congress, despite that the law assigned this job to Congress, and substituted his own set of facts. He then concluded no longer valid the provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that required states with a track record of discrimination to obtain approval in advance before any change in their voting laws could become effective. However, he DID uphold Obamacare—but not because authorized by the workhorse Commerce Clause; instead he did so on ground that clause that Obama insisted imposed a penalty was in fact a tax and therefor constitutional.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 21:09:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015