Supreme Court decisions that are “so clearly at variance with the national will” should be overridden by the other branches of government, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says.<\/p>\n
“What I reject, out of hand, is the idea that by five to four, judges can rewrite the Constitution, but it takes two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the states to equal five judges,” Gingrich said during a Georgetown University Law Center conference on the judiciary. […]<\/p>\n
Gingrich said “the other two branches have an absolute obligation to render independent judgment” in cases that are “at variance with the national will.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The specific legal controversy that sent Gingrich on this tirade was the 2002 case involving the Pledge of Allegiance and the addition of the phrase “under God.” As it turns out, the Supreme Court threw the case out on appeal for procedural reasons, but the former Speaker said the high court, if it had ruled the “wrong” way on the case, should have been overridden, because the polls show the public likes the Pledge the way it is.<\/p>\n
In other words, Gingrich believes the existing rule of law is inadequate — and should be replaced with a system in which constitutional law bends to comply with popularity contests.
\n
\nThe Gingrich model is basically to return to pre-Marbury v. Madison. The final arbiter of the Constitution has been the Supreme Court, but since Newt hasn’t cared for some rulings, it’s time, he believes, to reshuffle the separation-of-powers deck a bit.<\/p>\n
The high court could rule on a case, and the ruling would apparently stand — just as long as Congress and the White House gave their approval.<\/p>\n
A serious person simply wouldn’t make comments like these in a public forum. It’s not just that Gingrich is wrong, it’s that the suggestion sounds like a rant given by some guy at a bar who’s had one too many and who hasn’t thought about government since his 8th grade civics class.<\/p>\n
Gingrich isn’t a thinker; he’s a nut with an impressive title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Too often, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is taken seriously. Of all the major conservative voices on the political scene, Gingrich is considered something of a “thinker.” He’s thought of as someone who cares about “ideas.” Gingrich isn’t just some nut who reflexively parrots right-wing talking points, the conventional wisdom tells us, he’s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}