The Supreme Court Has Abandoned the Constitution

March 18, 2004

By Cheryl K. Chumley, associate editor APC News Wire

The good news is that some in Congress are awakening to the very arrogant and destructive tendencies of a few of our Supreme Court justices to discard constitutional law in favor of foreign precedent and rule as basis for their decisions.

The bad news is the action congressional members have taken is in vain.

Gathering steam is a House Resolution from Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), the “Reaffirmation of American Independence Resolution,” that seeks to sway Supreme Court justices from a disturbing trend to look overseas for guidance with domestic legal affairs. With roughly 60 co-sponsors, all Republican so far, the measure is due for introduction into the Judicial Committee for hearings before the end of March.

Specifically, this resolution condemns Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s stated belief that the Supreme Court “will rely increasingly … on international and foreign courts in examining domestic issues.” It also criticizes Justice Steven Breyer for expressing a similar viewpoint and six of the nine justices for relying on Jamaican, Indian, Zimbabwean and European Union courts to decide American constitutional cases.

A comparable resolution introduced earlier by Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) “urging all justices to base their opinions solely on the merits under the Constitution of the United States” now sits with the House subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. H. Res. 468 specifically criticizes Justice Anthony Kennedy and associate justices John Paul Stevens, Steven Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg for deciding cases based on foreign laws from the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations and on more informal global opinions.

Perhaps most frightening to those who believe in American sovereignty and the judicial system as espoused by our founders and as solidified in the Constitution is Associate Justice Ginsburg’s assertion to an American Constitution Society crowd, as tracked by H. Res. 468.

Judges, she said, “are becoming more open to comparative and international law perspectives.”

Is that Twilight Zone music I hear in the background? These judges are supposed to be our bastions of Constitutional defense, the last line of protection for an ‘of, by and for’ system of governance that is different from all others because it recognizes the inherent rights of the individual, as granted by God rather than as bestowed by a self-serving dictator or tyrannical power-monger.

If those of waning principle on the Supreme Court simply don’t recall the oath-of-office was to the Constitution and not the United Nations, perhaps these resolutions might indeed prove the gentle reminder that’s needed to return our justices’ focus to the domestic arena.

But that’s unlikely. The resolutions have no force of law and the justices are unlikely to back down because they are proponents of the policy that all things global must take precedence over all things Constitutional. Admitting this leads to the realization that effective efforts to reverse this judicial tyranny must focus at the root of the problem. That root, of course, is the United Nations.

What organization but the United Nations promotes the good of the global concern over the importance of the individual and state, and does so by such well-funded means? It’s the U.N. policy on sustainable development, as outlined in its Agenda 21 statement, that pushes for nations to abide such radical and economically damaging guidelines as are currently shaping our American way of life: new civics lessons in public schools that ignore the Bill of Rights and other Founding Father principles, environmental mandates that place half our nation’s lands under government control, Smart Growth strategies that result in over-priced, over-crowded working and living conditions.

These are but a few of the United Nations’ own documented goals that have been enacted and advanced in our country, reflecting a cultural and political acceptance of socialist-style concerns for the greater good of the global entity over the individual or sovereign nation. So if we as a nation, as reflected by our consistent re-election of politicians who support the United Nations, do nothing to halt the trend of quashing our Constitutional freedoms and promoting global governance, how can we expect our justices to act differently?

We can’t, unless we demand Congress risk more than a signature on a non-binding resolution that is all too easy to ignore or dismiss. We must instead compel Congress to attack at the base of the problem, the seepage of United Nation’s beliefs into our once proud and individual culture. It’s only when we as a nation have returned to our Constitutional roots that the voice of the court will begin to reflect that reform – and hopefully never again will we be subjected to the foolhardy, devastating gibberish of a U.S. Supreme Court justice embracing Zimbabwean law as our own.

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Tom DeWeese
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Tom DeWeese is one of the nation’s leading advocates of individual liberty, free enterprise, private property rights, personal privacy, back-to-basics education and American sovereignty and independence.