Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the wealthy conservative donor Harlan Crow’s lawyer after records showed undisclosed flights between Hawaii and New Zealand with the Supreme Court justice in 2010.
There really doesn’t seem to be any limit to the amount of bribery going on.
Sure there is. Someone who has been damaged by the law takes it to court, and the court decides in their favor, and the penalty for violating the law doesn’t apply to them. They don’t veto the law, they just decide the cases brought to them.
That’s different from the judiciary having a veto power they granted themselves. They have the power to decide cases, not the power to strike down a law.
Hell, the constitution even makes it explicit that Congress can pass a law restricting what cases can be appealed to the supreme court in the first place.
If the constitution intended for them to decide the validity of laws, why would it include a clause allowing Congress to pass a law the supreme court can’t review?
If they were supposed to have that power, why wasn’t it out in the constitution? Why was this check left entirely implied while the others were spelled out?
Why did a variety of the framers of the constitution say that it was a terrible idea?
You seem … to consider the 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. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. … Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.
— Thomas Jefferson
[I]n their decisions they will not confine themselves to any fixed or established rules, but will determine, according to what appears to them, the reason and spirit of the constitution. The opinions of the supreme court, whatever they may be, will have the force of law; because there is no power provided in the constitution, that can correct their errors, or controul their adjudications. From this court there is no appeal.
— a less notable constitutional delegate, but weirdly portentious, on why judicial review should not be included.
Sure there is. Someone who has been damaged by the law takes it to court, and the court decides in their favor, and the penalty for violating the law doesn’t apply to them. They don’t veto the law, they just decide the cases brought to them.
That’s different from the judiciary having a veto power they granted themselves. They have the power to decide cases, not the power to strike down a law.
Hell, the constitution even makes it explicit that Congress can pass a law restricting what cases can be appealed to the supreme court in the first place.
If the constitution intended for them to decide the validity of laws, why would it include a clause allowing Congress to pass a law the supreme court can’t review?
If they were supposed to have that power, why wasn’t it out in the constitution? Why was this check left entirely implied while the others were spelled out?
Why did a variety of the framers of the constitution say that it was a terrible idea?
— Thomas Jefferson
— a less notable constitutional delegate, but weirdly portentious, on why judicial review should not be included.