As I reported yesterday, Democrats - including Sen. Patrick Leahy (pictured) - piled in on the Supreme Court for some of its recent rulings, which they criticised for ignoring congressional intentions.
Today, the justices are heroic defenders of the Constitution, according to Leahy and his party colleagues.
That's because the Supreme Court upheld the habeas corpus rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees in its Boumediene v. Bush ruling today.
Yesterday, Leahy condemned the Supreme Court as being full of activist judges.
“I can’t think of more activist judges than the Supreme Court, who have overturned congressional actions intended to protect consumers," he said.
Today, after the court overturned a section of the Military Commissions Act (which was, of course, passed by Congress), Leahy was singing a different tune.
"Today’s Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush is a stinging rebuke of the Bush administration’s flawed detention policies, and a vindication for those who have also argued from the beginning that it was unwise as well as unconstitutional," Leahy said.
3 comments:
This doesn't strike me as a change of tune. Among the many reconciliations of the two statements:
The first statement laments the justices. The second statement praises the decision.
Or...
The first statement laments the Court's jurisprudence with respect to consumer protection. The second statement praises the Court's consitutional jurisprudence.
Or...
Leahy believes that the Court should accord more deference to *legislative* intent, but agrees with the Court's appilcation of *constitutional* principles.
The list goes on.
Unless one considers Leahy's "tune" to be so devoid of nuance and detail, so as to be equivalent to a merely a choice between the two notes "Supreme Court: Good" or "Supreme Court: Bad", I don't hear a change of tune.
But that's just my silly ear...
I wanted to comment but the previous poster said it very well. touche.
Of course, all of these proposed reconciliations (intentionally?) miss the point that the OP was trying to make, which is that on day one, Leahy criticized the Supreme Court for ignoring the will of Congress, and then on day two praised the Supreme Court for ignoring the will of Congress.
The MCA may have been a Bush administration idea, but it was every bit as much a duly-enacted Act of Congress as was the consumer protection law Leahy complained about on day one. Thus, if the Court was "activist" in ignoring Congress's will re consumer protection, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that it was also "activist" re the MCA.
Yet Leahy does not, or chooses not to, see it this way.
(And the "'constitutional' principles" involved in Boumediene do not change the analysis, because Congress is just as responsible as the COurt for interpreting and acting within the Constitution, and its passage of the MCA is tantamount to its expression of the view that the MCA is constitutional. For Leahy to excuse the Court for striking it as unconstitutional without being upset about the Court ignoring the will of Congress is to for him to abdicate his role in the constitutional system.)
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