-By Warner Todd Huston
Ever since Justice Sandra Day O’Connor began babbling about it several years ago, the talk of Supreme Court Justices of the United States of America using foreign court rulings to base their decisions upon has been a topic of dread for those interested in adhering to the U.S. Constitution.
It should be shocking to see a U.S. Supreme Justice talking about using foreign precedent but it would sadly not surprise anyone that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former ACLU lawyer, is doing just that. Not only is she bringing up the subject but she professes not to understand why any American would be upset that a SCOTUS Justice might see nothing wrong with using foreign court decisions to decide our own rulings.
Apparently the word “sovereignty,” and the phrase “supreme law of the land” are not as important to her as they are to most Americans as infuriating as that is.
In a recent New York Times piece, Justice Ginsburg is stumped by those against importing foreign ideas into our law. “I frankly don’t understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law,” she said at an appearance at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.
Fortunately, The Times quotes Chief Justice Roberts as to why it is a bad idea.
“If we’re relying on a decision from a German judge about what our Constitution means, no president accountable to the people appointed that judge and no Senate accountable to the people confirmed that judge,” Chief Justice Roberts said at his confirmation hearing. “And yet he’s playing a role in shaping the law that binds the people in this country.”
Just so, Chief Justice, just so.
One might think that Justice Ginsburg has some well thought out legal reasons why she thinks it not so bad to import foreign law into our own. One would be wrong. In fact, her reasoning is downright childish.
The Canadian Supreme Court, she said, is “probably cited more widely abroad than the U.S. Supreme Court.” There is one reason for that, she said: “You will not be listened to if you don’t listen to others.”
Justice Ginsburg gives the impression that she wants to emulate the unhinged, obsequiousness evinced by Sally Field when she took the Oscar in 1985 as she bellowed, “You like me, right now, you like me!”
Justice Ginsburg is obviously more interested in being liked by foreigners than in properly adjudicating American law within the American tradition, more interested in injecting foreign ideas than in paying proper fealty to the Constitution.
This woman cannot retire fast enough to suit a patriotic American.
But as they say on TV… But wait, there’s more.
She had a secondary reason that is even worse than her first one.
“What happened in Europe was the Holocaust,” she said, “and people came to see that popularly elected representatives could not always be trusted to preserve the system’s most basic values.”
That’s right, America. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn’t see any difference at all between the United States of America and Nazi Germany!
Yes, her retirement will be a blessing to this country and the world.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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