Extreme Conservative Judicial Activism And the Voting Rights ActBy Big Tent Democrat, Section Constitution
Posted on Fri Jun 12, 2009 at 08:04:35 AM EST
The "reporting" by the "Respectable Intellectual Center" (yes, I mean Jeff Rosen) "predicted" that Chief Justice John Roberts would prove to be a modest and moderate Justice (in fact, Rosen was sticking to his story on Roberts as late as July 2008 (Rosen wrote "It's still too early to judge Roberts's tenure, but it seems increasingly clear that liberals dodged a bullet when President Bush nominated him to be chief justice.")) In fact, Chief Justice Roberts has proven to be one of the most extreme conservative judicial activsts we have yet seen. Keep that in mind when you read any account on these issues by Rosen and the "Respectable Intellectual Center." Treating them as authoritative on these issues would be the equivalent of making Tom "Suck On This" Friedman your go-to analyst on Iraq. Roberts and his right wing band have proven to be extreme conservative judicial activists with little respect for the text of the Constitution, precedent, and the role of the Legislative Branch.
The latest threat posed by Chief Justice Roberts and his extreme conservative cohorts (Scalia, Thomas and Alito) is to the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution and the Voting Rights Acts enacted and renewed by Congress under their Section 5 powers granted by those Amendments.
The Constitutional Accountability Center, issued this report (PDF)
http://www.theusconstitution.org/upload/filelists/283_Shield_of_National_Protection.pdf for its "The Shield" series and discuses the pending NAMUDNO case and the extreme judicial activism of the Roberts band:
Sometime in the next few weeks, the Supreme Court will issue what may well turn out to be the blockbuster ruling of this term — its decision in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder (NAMUDNO). The plaintiff in this case, a small municipal utility district in Texas, is challenging the constitutionality of a critical provision of an iconic civil rights statute — the Voting Rights Act of 1965, most recently re-authorized by Congress in 2006 (with a Senate vote of 98-0). Questions posed by the Court’s conservatives during oral argument indicate that they are poised to agree with the plaintiff and strike down the challenged portion of the Act.
. . . A ruling that guts a core part of the Voting Rights Act would illustrate that the Court’s conservatives are not willing to take the text and history of the Constitution seriously, and the need for Justices who will. In NAMUDNO, the proper decision on the constitutional challenge to the Voting Rights Act will turn on the correct reading of the Enforcement Clauses of the Civil War Amendments — the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments — an area in which the Court has already gone far astray. With the ruling in NAMUDNO, the Court could make one of its biggest and most harmful constitutional errors in history.
CAC’s new report, The Shield of National Protection, reveals how drastically a ruling striking down part of the Voting Rights Act would depart from the text and history of the Constitution. As The Shield demonstrates through a careful study of the text and history of the Civil War Amendments, the Reconstruction Framers intended the Enforcement Clauses to provide Congress with broad authority to guarantee, “by appropriate legislation,” the fundamental rights secured by those Amendments, including the right to vote. . . .
Unfortunately, as discussed in The Shield, the sweeping enforcement power given to Congress has too often been ignored by judges more concerned with results than with upholding the Constitution. The modern Supreme Court has been the worst offender, re-affirming earlier erroneous rulings and creating, out of thin air, new restrictions on the exercise of federal authority under the Civil War Amendments. As we await the Court’s ruling on the Voting Rights Act, there is reason to fear that the Roberts Court will further restrict congressional power in an area at the heart of the rights and freedoms the Civil War Amendments were intended to protect.
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(lots of links) more:
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/6/12/9435/46444