Is The Supreme Court the Ultimate Arbiter of the Constitution?

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson ^ | 28 Sep 1820 | Thomas Jefferson

[Tenacious 1]

What they teach in law-schools is “case law” and “precedence” which deserve EVERY Citizen’s utter contempt; for ‘precedence’ is nothing more than the Judicial equivalent of the children’s game “telephone”being played with the Citizen’s Liberties.

This is startling but believable. I recently was in the company of a man (Marvin Scott) who is running to unseat Indiana's 7th district Representative in the House. Andre Carson is an abomination of representation. The Marion County (Indianapolis) district is heavily gerrymandered to sustain liberal representation. He won his seat a few years ago when his activist mother passed away, vacating the position. Like moths to a flame, her ignorant and inexperienced son was elected in her place.

During the course of our conversation I haphazardly commented on my belief that most politicians have never read the constitution let alone the Federalist Papers (or Anti). I'm not sure if Mr. Scott said it, but the next comment was, "It is not required reading to graduate from any law school."

[supercat]

The problem isn’t interpreting the Constitution, per se, it’s re-interpreting it. There’s a number of ways they do this, the “interstate commerce clause” is a good example thereof,as is the Keelo v. New London case.

A good check on that would be to allow jurors to examine all factual matters associated with a case (and allow parties to the case to present evidence to the jury relevant to such matters). One of the major problems with today's "juris prudence" is that it allows general factual findings by judges and legislators to be applied broadly, and often allows no effective means to rebut such findings even in particular cases where they do not apply. Allowing jurors to examine the facts of individual cases would help reverse this tendency.