There are many ways to slice what the Supreme Court did. A friend has argued that the conservative court followed it's conservative philosophy by deciding that the "weight" of the vote carried the day and that getting a precise count was of a secondary concern (we are governed by a representative system, after all, not a democracy). I believe Burke (the father of modern conservative thought) held this view of voting.
Of course, I, as a conservative, believe that the court is supposed to judge the law, not make it. I oppose an activist court. I'm a constructionalist. In the absence of law or precedent (and only precedent founded on the law or precedent, etc) should carry weight in a decision. In the absence of such support, the court should sit back and do nothing and let Congress or the Executive figure it out. This is how I believe our checks and balances system was designed. In Gore vs. Bush (or was it Bush vs. Gore) I believe the Court's biggest non-conservative moment came in stepping in to decide what was essentially a state's-rights issue. It wasn't a federal issue. There was no federal issue at stake. So you had this court, in straight-faced irony, throwing out cherished conservative principles -- deciding law and butting into a state issue, being down right activist. Now you have the further irony of super liberals like Alan Dershowitz criticizing the court for being activist and making law, when for years these same liberals have defended and defied such activist decisions as Roe vs. Wade (there is absolutely no Constitutional support for the decision -- regardless of what you think about abortion, Roe vs. Wade was just plain stupid, even left-leaning justice Ginsberg believes the Constitution was misapplied). It's strange times we live in. Conservatives behaving like liberals and liberals attacking them for it. But in the end, I stand by my original statement. The system worked. We'll never cross all the T's and dot all the I's correctly. Few things we ever do will be arrived at in a perfect course of action and dialog. Our system wasn't designed to work that way. It was designed to route around human imperfection. In the end, we got the president we deserved, and even though I'm still somewhat skeptical of Bush, we could have had a lot worse if our system had let us down. H. -----Original Message----- From: Howie Hamlin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 8:06 PM To: CF-Community Subject: Re: Bush Wins! One could also suggest that what the Supreme Court did was criminal (as a matter of fact there are a few books that deal with this - one by Alan Dershowitz). The system only works completely when the individual branches of government heed the boundaries. Personally, I still think that Bush probably still would have gotten in (as the real remedy was for Congress to step in and they were controlled by the Republicans) but it troubles me to see that the court did what they did. Howie ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "CF-Community" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 9:50 PM Subject: RE: Bush Wins! > Well, yes, but ... > > If you count the votes they way Gore wanted the votes counted, Bush wins. > > If you counted the votes the way they should have been counted (all of the > votes, both under and over and this chad and that chad, etc.), then Gore > wins. > > But the bottom line is, the system worked. We had a contested election. One > branch of the government made a decision about how the outcome should be > decided and that led to an eventual declaration of a winner. There was no > civil war, no coups, no civil unrest (at least of the kind that leads to > death and destruction). Yes, one could make the case that there were flaws > in the system, that there were some possible this or possible that in the > political hanky-panky realm, but in the end, we had a smooth transition of > power, which is the most important thing we could ask for. > > H. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Your ad could be here. Monies from ads go to support these lists and provide more resources for the community. http://www.fusionauthority.com/ads.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
