Clarification/Follow-up by Itsdb on 05/02/06 9:21 pm:
Choux, I've already read what jack said - what do YOU say in response to my fair and accurate response besides vague accusations from another source?

Clarification/Follow-up by quixotic_Choux on 05/02/06 9:43 pm:
It, I agree 100% with jack, that's why I re-posted his excellent quote from the Boston Globe.

Have a good day.

Clarification/Follow-up by Itsdb on 05/02/06 9:46 pm:
Pretty profound Choux. You, jack and the Boston Globe in synchronous thought and speech.

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 05/03/06 10:38 am:
What about the lauded BALANCE OF POWERS???

good question . The founders were not looking for a balance of power in that the branches would be co-equal . They instead designed a system of checks and balances. What has emerged has been a periodic shifting of powers. The court was created with it's checks also ,but it increased greatly in power over time .As I said ;after Marbury there was a 50 year gap before the court used it's review authority to reverse a law;mostly because the court knew the other branches were likely to ignore the decision . Andrew Jackson's made this comment on the decision in Worcester v. Georgia "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."

Since Dred Scott ,(the decision that tipped the balance and made the civil war inevidible...think about it ... the Court upheld the constitutionality of slavery and overturned the Missouri Compromise which would've made all the new territories free states ...Slavery as an institution would've withered on the vine and died without a civil war.) ,the court has increasingly exercised judicial review ;and in the 2nd half of the 20th Century in some cases they have acted as judiciary ;legislative ;and executive ( many times in cases about schools ...desegregation;busing ;funding etc).This even though the founders intent is clear . Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 47:

The judges themselves can exercise no executive prerogative . . . nor any legislative function. . . . "Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor."

And where has that led us to ? Well we have an active judge on the court now;Stephen Breyer ;who's book Active Liberty : Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution openly advocates for the notion that U.S. constitutional law is whatever a majority of Supreme Court justices wishes based upon their own notions of what "democracy" and fairness should produce.