RE: Scalia, Religious Neutrality
January 3, 2016 at 11:06 am
(This post was last modified: January 3, 2016 at 11:08 am by Thumpalumpacus.)
(January 3, 2016 at 4:32 am)robvalue Wrote:(January 3, 2016 at 12:13 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Absent a high crime or misdemeanor, SC Justices cannot be removed from office, constitutionally.
I see thanks. Surely this is ridiculous? In England we have similarly unelected House of Lords members, who are probably just as hard to remove.
It's scary they're not even required to understand the constitution...
No, there's a good reason for it. The Constitution is designed to protect minorities from majorities, in its Bill of Rights, for instance. Should the Court make a decision which enrages the majority, if there were a legal way to remove them, the consideration of such an outcome might well have an effect upon the decision being handed down. Justices might be afraid to apply the law impartially if they thought it might cost them their jobs.
Indeed, at the state here here in America, we have seen exactly that happen to justices, most infamously in the case of Rose Bird, the former Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court who was removed from office by the voters after a partisan and less-than-honest campaign. In her case, she was anti-death penalty, and had voted to overturn 61 of the 64 cases she had heard. Conservative ideologues mounted a well-financed campaign against her and two other Associate Justices which had them removed from office back in the 80s.
In other words, the lifetime tenure of the SCOTUS Justices is designed to shield them from the vagaries of popular opinion. It's certainly imperfect, as Justice Scabies insists upon showing time and again, but the alternative in my opinion has worse results.
As an aside, I had been under the impression that the HoL was a largely powerless body. What functions do they provide as part of your Parliament?