Thursday, September 24, 2009

Jean Schmidt: The [Federal] Courts are the “Ultimate Power”


Republican Congresswoman Jean Schmidt admits to voting for unconstitutional legislation. Her excuse is the typical one, its up to the courts to decide what is and what isn't constitutional. "The [Federal] courts are the ultimate power", she said. Not according to Article III section 2, Ms. Schmidt. It reads:

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases* before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

*includes "Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party"

President Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend in 1821:

You seem … to consider the [federal] judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions, a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy … The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the corruption of time and party its members would become despots.

Source: “An End to Judicial Tyranny?” by Thomas R. Eddlem, The New American, October 18, 2004, p. 44.

Tell Jean Schmidt that her actions are unacceptable.

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