Tuesday, January 4, 2005
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
The words of Chief Justice William Rehnquist deserve a hearing from members of Congress.
In an annual report on the judiciary, Rehnquist warns that Congress had sometimes ignored the views of judges on court-related legislation, neglected funding of the courts and engaged in unseemly political criticism of "judicial activism." Rehnquist's battle with cancer gave the criticisms an air of poignancy.
Rehnquist is a conservative with the highest intellectual standards. It's a sad reflection of today's lack of restraint among many political conservatives elsewhere in government that he felt the need at the end of his career to level his criticisms.
As Rehnquist noted, political attacks on judges have occurred throughout the history of the republic. Such tensions, he said, can be healthy. Some steps, he said, have taken place to improve judicial relations with Congress since he voiced similar concerns a year ago.
But the chief justice said the political criticisms of judges have increased in recent years, even leading to calls for impeachment on the basis of judicial decisions. He said the need to preserve the independence of judges was recognized early in U.S. history.
The right-wing pressure to shape the law to ideology is likely to increase. The New York Times reports that James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, is threatening to target six Democratic senators if they filibuster President Bush's nominees for judges. The warnings about judicial independence from Rehnquist, himself quite a strict constructionist of the Constitution, ought to give pause to ideological activists in Congress and beyond.
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