Possible Decisions For A Conservative Activist Court

What could happen if the current liberal activist Supreme Court was replaced with an activist conservative court - a Supreme Court filled with conservatives who would do what Leftists have done for years, and use that aristocratic body to impose their will on the nation?

The Supreme Court, invoking the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that no person shall be denied by a state government equal protection of the laws, might strike down all progressive state income tax laws, holding that discriminating against a person on the grounds of income violates the Equal Protection Clause. This would leave state income tax laws with the ability to assess a proportional income tax law, but the Supreme Court could further hold that any law which requires a state taxpayer to pay more than another state taxpayer simply because he earns more violates the Equal Protection Clause.

Indeed, the Supreme Court could hold that property taxes which require one property owner under state property tax laws to pay more than another property tax owner violated the Equal Protection Clause. Or it might extend this principle and hold that states cannot discriminate against a person because he owns property at all - that would violate the Equal Protection Clause.

What applied to income and property could also be applied to inheritance and to all economic transactions. Why should any person within a state be required, under the Equal Protection Clause, to pay more taxes than anyone else? The practical effect of this would be that state governments could assess a per capita tax - an equal tax on each person in the state - or it could assess an adult per capita tax - a tax on each adult in the state.

Although many people would find this inherently fair - do we “buy” more state government benefits because we earn more or have more, or is it instead the other way around: that we require less of state government, the richer we are? - if the Supreme Court so ruled, given the omnipotence now placed in that body by Leftists, then state revenue law, like state abortion law three decades ago, would become the province of nine geriatric Americans.

The Supreme Court could rule that states that require unions when fifty-one percent of the members of a factory vote to have a union violate the “freedom of association” right discovered by activist judges in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Suddenly, no one in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio or Illinois who belonged to a labor union as a condition of his employment could be required to continue to belong (or pay dues equivalent to membership) in that union. One of the principal pillars of Leftist political muscle would quickly whither and die if it was entirely a free and voluntary association.

Indeed, there would be nothing to prevent some workers in a factory from forming their own free and voluntary association of labor, unregulated by state or by federal laws, and other workers could form their own free and voluntary association - and management could negotiate or not negotiate with them as it wished. An enormous load of inefficiency in our economy would vanish overnight, along with vast amounts of political power for the Left.

An activist conservative Supreme Court could also rule that accreditation and credentialing, except when it was voluntary by the individual, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Why should state governments be able to decide, for example, that someone with a degree in Education who understood physics poorly could teach physics, but that an engineer who understood physics very well could not?

All of the tentacles of regulation, indirect taxation and limitation created by state government control over professions - all of which could easily be replaced by voluntary regulation with goodwill and trust as the security for transactions - could be severed by one single decision. People who knew subjects could teach children those subjects; people who knew accounting could practice it without passing tests; people who understood human nature could practice psychology.

The more we think about it, the more we may want an activist Supreme Court. What we call “constitutional law” today is simply decades of Leftist priests divining the entrails of goats. “Constitutional law” is more than just bootstraps: it is bootstraps pulled up with skyhooks: it is whole cloth. Perhaps the best way to end the unconstitutionally created artificial constitutional amendments known as “constitutional law” is through an aggressive, militant and unapologetic conservative Supreme Court. Perhaps the more we talk like that, the less Leftists will deify the Supreme Court and lesser gods.

I don't want an activist court period -- don't care if it is liberal or conservative. I want the Judge Borks of the world along with the Scalia's to sit on the Court and make their rulings based on the law not on their feelings about what the law should be made to say!

Don't like activist judges of any ideology!

But what you don't know is that there's people here at FR that precisely want a conservative activist court, hiding behind the motto of "checking liberal judicial activism."

You'll find them in any thread with the word "Terri" and "Schiavo."

I know! Been sitting here shaking my head for days -- I thought conservatives were for non-activist judges! But then they folks are calling for Pres Bush and Gov Bush to break the law as well.

But what you don't know is that there's people here at FR that precisely want a conservative activist court, hiding behind the motto of "checking liberal judicial activism."

A conservative court would initially seem an activist court as in hoses out decades of leftist corruption of constitutional law. The 'right' of privacy would topple. A constitutional application of the commerce and takings clause would seem revolutionary. After that, however, I would prefer that my conservative judges just interpret the constitution according to the intent of the founders.

Since the Left is going to accuse any strict constructionist judge of being political,conservative judges might as well BE political.

We conservatives would all prefer our judges to be people who apply and uphold the U.S. Constitution, rather than invent law based on their own beliefs. However, recent history has shown that a) judges of all stripes like to be activist judges, since by being activist they can enhance their own power; b) Left wing judges pay no attention to the law, the constitution or their own precedent, and will continue to impose Liberalism by judicial diktat. These judges have shown they will ignore the people and what their elected representatives say, and will flout any attempt by Congress to limit their judicial dictatorship--all the while being applauded on by the hyena press. The only solution left is to have conservative judges issue countervailing decrees, in essence fight fire with fire.

Much as I regret saying this, judicial restraint is doomed. It flies against the ideology of many judges, and the power imperative of the rest.

The 'right' of privacy would topple.

I don't want the right of privacy to topple. I'm watched nearly everywhere I go by cameras. Every organization I do business with demands my Social Security number. Every keystroke I make on my company's computer is logged.

I can get credit within minutes in the thousands of dollars based on my Social Security number, due to the fact that credit rating companies have every piece of financial information about me. I don't have any right to privacy as it is. I definitely don't want what ever little miniscule right to privacy that I may have to be taken away.

Then go fight it out in the legislature. That's where the constitution vests that power. If you start making up stuff and imagining it's in the Constitution just because you think its a really good idea, you are no better than Justice Douglas imagining emanations of penumbras of auras of the Constitution. The only way a Constitution works is if it's a Constitution and not the playground of whatever faction holds five votes--even if you are one of the five.

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