Before everyone jumps on me about the implications of that, read further.
Judges are supposed to INTERPRET the law, and this judge believes the law is unconstitutional. If this judge believes that, she must rule against its enforcement.
The Executive branch's responsibility is to ENFORCE the law, whether the Administration agrees with it or not. And enforcing the law means appealing when a lower court says it is unconstitutional. Until the Supreme Court makes a finding of constitutionality, the assumption is that the law is VALID, it stands and must be enforced.
The other alternative is that the Congress can CHANGE the law by ENACTING new law (or not) before the Supreme Court rules.
This forces the Congress to take responsibility for their actions. Each individual law maker must stand up and say YES or NO in PUBLIC.
Even my 8th grader understands checks and balances and division of power in our system. Sheesh.
3 comments:
I am all for questioning laws. I think we've done far too much adding and tweaking as it is. I'd like to go back to people taking responsibility for their own actions and thinking for themselves, the problem is, since we all don't think alike, legislation is enacted to force us to behave alike. Some good, and some bad, and which is which depends on who one speaks to.
Well...maybe someday, in someone's lifetime, the world over will grasp the concept of Thomas Jefferson's words written long ago.
'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'
I guess my point is that people who make laws should be adult enough to stick by them or repeal them. It seems the legislatures don't want to do the hard thing sometimes -- stand up for what they supposedly believe in or say "I was mistaken" and change it.
Then it is up to the other branches to do the dirty work, and that's not the way it was supposed to work. It undermines respect for the process.
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