Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito no doubt intended to shock the political world when he told interviewers for the Wall Street Journal that “No provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”
Many observers dismissed his comment out of hand, noting the express language in Article III, establishing the court’s jurisdiction under “such regulations as the Congress shall make.”
But Alito wasn’t bluffing. His recently issued statement, declining to recuse himself in a controversial case, was issued without a single citation or reference to the controlling federal statute. Nor did he mention or adhere to the test for recusal that other justices have acknowledged in similar circumstances. It was as though he declared himself above the law.
No part of the Constitution gives the Supreme Court the power of judicial review either. The court created that power out of nothing. If you wanna get pissy, Alito.
Or sovereign immunity, absolute immunity and qualified immunity. They’re just shit the court made up.
He seems to think he’s above the Constitution. Probably thinks he’s Judge Dredd.
To the iso-cubes with them
I don’t know why but I can’t picture Alito in a full suite of armour with helmet and sidegun and all… the image I have of him with such a loadout on himself is that of a frail, weak, elderly man blabbering about his authority on people’s life…
Wait, that’s how I would see more or less anyone of that sort nowadays.
Maybe American institutions nedd a bit of a refresher
I can’t tell you how happy I am to see someone point this out here.
As if the ridiculous set of laws we have weren’t bloated enough already, the nearly bottomless stack of court cases that modify them all and stack on each other make it impossible to have a fair trial.
It’s telling that the people who want to eliminate the Executive Departments because they don’t have Constitutional authority to create laws have been silent on Judicial Review.
Agreed. Personally, I think it is because we don’t bother to really teach the Constitution in schools. We summarize the Bill of Rights, read the first line or to of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, and then pretend students understand it.
And he always wants to get pissy.
Regardless, the constitution very clearly does have language establishing that Congress can regulate the SC. Alito should be embarrassed to be spewing such baldfaced and easily disproved bullshit, but here we are
I made the same point elsewhere in this thread… But in fairness, the Constitution gives them final judicial appeal power (pretty much word-for-word).
It’s an interestingly thin line that their judicial decision about any dispute is binding. It’s clear they have judicial decision about any dispute of fact. From that, it seems obvious in retrospect that would give them final appeal power on any dispute of law as well. Ironically, that they aren’t the final decisionmaker on State Law seems the oddity based upon the wording of their mandate.
That’s the point of a judiciary, sadly. If two parties disagree on something relevant, we’re supposed to have a neutral arbitration about which party is correct. One party says “the Constitution does not allow abortions” and the other party says “that’s not how it looks to me”. Lacking congressional action, there’s already relevant law one way or the other and people are disagreeing on which way the law goes. In an ideal world, a “free” country should err any ambiguity on the side of individual freedom, but even then there’s a disagreement on whether a fetus could legally be seen as an individual.
I think the problem with Marbury is that nobody saw exactly how broken the idea of having one authority to decide “who decides what is true when two parties disagree on the facts?” could extend. As the US court is a Common Law court, I wonder how much of that comes from European judicial style anyway.
Wow what a stupid misunderstanding you’ve spent so many paragraphs elucidating on.