(no subject)

[kuangning]

108th CONGRESS
2d Session


H. R. 3920

To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

March 9, 2004


Mr. Lewis of Kentucky (for himself, Mr. DeMint, Mr. Everett, Mr. Pombo, Mr. Coble, Mr. Collins, Mr. Goode, Mr. Pitts, Mr. Franks of Arizona, Mr. Hefley, Mr. Doolittle, and Mr. Kingston) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition to the Committee on Rules, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


A BILL

To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court.


Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004”.

SEC. 2. CONGRESSIONAL REVERSAL OF SUPREME COURT JUDGMENTS.

The Congress may, if two thirds of each House agree, reverse a judgment of the United States Supreme Court—

(1) if that judgment is handed down after the date of the enactment of this Act; and

(2) to the extent that judgment concerns the constitutionality of an Act of Congress.

SEC. 3. PROCEDURE.

The procedure for reversing a judgment under section 2 shall be, as near as may be and consistent with the authority of each House of Congress to adopt its own rules of proceeding, the same as that used for considering whether or not to override a veto of legislation by the President.

SEC. 4. BASIS FOR ENACTMENT.

This Act is enacted pursuant to the power of Congress under article III, section 2, of the Constitution of the United States.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


To put it succinctly, if not originally:

If you're not angry yet, you're not paying attention.

Comments

[darkmoon.livejournal.com]

Do you have a link?

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc108/h3920_ih.xml

[darkmoon.livejournal.com]

Thanks (to both of you)

[kuangning]

Link here.

[damienroc.livejournal.com]

Umm...

Okay, this is blatantly unconstitutional. Even a total layman like myself can see that. It's all in the basic setup of the legislative democracy we live in.

Legislature: Create Laws
Judiciary: Interpret Laws
Executive: Enforce Laws

Now, since this is unconstitutional, the Judiciary will likely step in, declare it null and void (or whatnot) and then...

The law is still in place at that point so the Legislature reverses the decision?

Am I off base here? Did I miss something?

[kuangning]

Not missing anything. It's a bblatant attempt to evade the checks and balances in place.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

If the law's in place, Congress will reserve the right to say "piss off," which is something they've been moving towards anyway. So yes, it's unconstitutional, but it's being written by people who don't care about constitutionality.

The PATRIOT Act is unconstitutional as all hell. You may have noticed it hasn't been seriously challenged yet, nor has its sequel which was ridered into American law on a tax bill the day Saddam was found.

Those twelve traitors who proposed the bill want to eliminate the judiciary so they can start stamping down on the civil rights rulings. This is a direct response to the various gay-rights rulings, and possibly to a couple other things like the Pledge rulings a couple years ago and whatnot. These guys want to hamstring the judiciary so they can roll back rights as they please.

They intend on passing unconstitutional legislation.

[johnbot.livejournal.com]

First thought that sprung into my head was "so THAT's how they'll get rid of that pesky gay marriage thing".

I wish this was one of those things that would be posted fifteen days from now. I can't believe they could actually have the nerve to propose something like this. They are, in essence, trying to make themselves the new supreme court.

I'm sure I've seen this before in history. People don't just wake up one morning to find that they have no rights anymore--they watch them slip away over a period of time, but don't care to notice until the day that it affects them.

Nothing's unconstitutional if you change the constitution! How can you argue with logic like that?

[kuangning]

When I first took American Government in high school, I actually asked about that. "What if they just change the Constitution?" I got a verbal pat on the head, and told that Anericans would never let their rights be trampled that way. I wish that were so.

[heronblue.livejournal.com]

That's unconstitutional. Unfortunately, a lot of things that are going on right now are unconstitutional, and the courts are the only hope for reversing those laws.

But even in this insane, insane administration with the wildly partisan-Republican House, I don't think a bill like that could pass. Even for those who are doing this for political reasons-- trying to curtail what the right wing calls "judicial activism" and what other people call "civil rights"-- would find that a law like this could backfire horribly for their causes in the future.

And honestly, Congress already has the power to reverse Supreme Court decisions, in some ways.

Hey, did you hear that Renquist (there's an h in that name somewhere, but I don't know where to put it) is contemplating retirement? That's nothing short of disaster. Even if the Bush administration were able to do something long-sighted and fair, we'd still be looking at a potential Chief Justice position for Scalia.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

The PATRIOT Act is entirely unconstitutional, and almost as broad as this is. Said act also passed overwhelmingly.

The problem with looking at a bill, saying "Pfft, nothing'll come of that" and going about your business because it shouldn't pass is that, now and then, bills like that are going to come through.

This is rather more important than most pieces of legislation out there. The mere fact that it's been proposed should be creating an outroar. "It'll never pass so I'm not going to say anything" only helps this sort of thing.

Likelihood of passage

[inflection.livejournal.com]

Checking the Congressional Record, I see that the bill was introduced with a host of others and not debated; instead, its (main) sponsor talked about it during 5 minute speeches under an appointed temporary Speaker. The Record doesn't mention the times at which someone spoke, but this suggests to me that this was the late-evening grandstanding that Congressmen do when they want to play to their districts and don't expect much to happen.
If you want to do something about this bill, keep an eye on its status at thomas ( http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:h.r.03920: is what I usually think of as a bill's home page, and http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:HR03920:@@@X has the bill's complete status ). At the moment, there's not much that most representatives can do anything about, unless your Rep sits on either of the committees currently considering the bill. (The sponsors could remove themselves, and the last sponsor exiting would kill the bill, but this rarely happens unless someone gets no co-sponsors and decides maybe they're being hasty.) Check and see if your Rep does -- crazy bills do get out of committee sometimes, as they're heavily controlled by the chairs, who are not only elected by the majority on the committee but exercise immediate control over junior members' effectiveness. If your Rep sits on the committee, telephone or hand-write a letter (they count all incoming positions, but they weight more difficult methods more; whenever I hand-write a letter to an official I get a non-form-letter reply) pointing out how bad you think this is.
The action for most of us now is to make people aware of the bill's existence and organize. The time to hit gear is if the bill is referred to the full House, and if we're ready we'll do better.
(That said, in my darkest dreams I don't see this passing the Senate, which hasn't touched this yet. I'd be much more worried about this becoming law as a small rider in a much larger bill. This is a short, clear, uncloaked bill which seems to me very much like a pro forma move to curry favor with the base.)

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

Okay. This country needs a damn Mongol Horde to overrun the capital, give them some actual issues to think about.

This is...

GAAAAAAAH.

Trust me, I'm angry. Inarticulate, but bloody furious.

[kuangning]

*nods quietly.* I sympathise. I wish I knew how to send a clear, impossible-to-ignore message: it's your job to keep these guys in line! Because it is.

[filemaniac.livejournal.com]

You've got to be *bleeping* kidding me! This blatently throws dirt in the face of the system of checks and balances and basically places more unconstitutional power in the hands of the legislature. Democracy, my ass.

[kuangning]

Mmhmm. :/