Thursday, March 16, 2006

She needs to get More Sleep...

...preferably when court is in session. Seems Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was in Cape Town, South Africa last month giving a speech titled, "A Decent Respect for the Opinions of [Human]Kind. Too bad she apparently does not have a decent respect for the Constitution she was sworn to uphold.
In Her Honor's words:
To a large extent, I believe, the critics in Congress and in the media misperceive how and why U.S. courts refer to foreign and international court decisions. We refer to decisions rendered abroad, it bears repetition, not as controlling authorities, but for their indication, in Judge Wald's words, of "common denominators of basic fairness governing relationships between the governors and the governed."

The purpose of the SC is NOT to determine what is "fair". It is to determine if a given act violates the Constitution or not. Not what the justice wants the Constitution to say, but what it says. If this is her thought process, I hope she sleeps while cases are argued in front of her more often.

1 comment:

K T Cat said...

I like your post. I didn't think of the sleep angle. I took a different tack at my blog.

Enjoy!