NYT: In Roberts Hearing, Specter Assails (Rehnquist Court re. Congress)

[DeepModem Mom]

In Roberts Hearing, Specter Assails Court
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: September 15, 2005


WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 - Senator Arlen Specter's testy interrogation of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. on the Supreme Court's treatment of Congress may well have left viewers scratching their heads on Wednesday morning, with cryptic references to the "congruence and proportionality test" and to unfamiliar case names like "Lane and Hibbs."

But the line of questioning that Mr. Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is Judiciary Committee chairman, chose to pursue offered a window on the increasingly troubled relationship between the court and Congress, as well as on one of the most consequential developments of the Rehnquist court's later years.

In a series of decisions, many written by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist himself, the court declared unconstitutional acts of Congress that had been passed by broad bipartisan majorities.

Laws permitting public employees to sue state employers for discrimination on the basis of disability and age, and also giving women access to federal court to sue rapists for damages, ran up against the court's new definition of the limits on Congress's power and the justices' insistence that they alone have the final word in interpreting the Constitution....

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From 1995 to 2003, the Supreme Court overturned all or parts of 33 federal statutes, 10 of them on the ground that Congress had exceeded its authority either to regulate interstate commerce or to enforce the constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection. Until then, the modern court gave Congress wide berth to define its own role under both of the Constitution's relevant provisions, the Commerce Clause and the 14th Amendment....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/politics/politicsspecial1/15legal.html

[4dsc]

1. on the basis of "Original intent "

You can see where the courts have been headed and where we are going when they confirm Roberts. 50 years of progressive government down the drain. Let the corporation rule!!