Arlen Specter Quotes
We in Congress don’t have much influence on the Supreme Court. We confirm judges and then we never hear from them. They don’t call. They don’t write.
Arlen Specter, U. S. Senator (Republican, PA), Statement, Senate Judiciary Hearing, September 15, 2005
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Originally it was published in Boston under the name “A Columbian Patriot.”
The government of Pakistan regarded this as seditious. The Government can fire judges at will and the military has the right to convene its own courts and try Pakistani civilians for certain alleged crimes by removing their cases from the civilian courts. Even when a Pakistani judge is not intimidated by the government or the military, the Islamic extremist fanatics often assassinate any public official who any one of thousands of fanatics feels is anti-Islamic.
In many nations, there is little judicial independence from the government. Judicial decisions that thwart government sometimes produce retaliation ranging from reducing the pay or staff of judges, threatened investigations and impeachment even arrest and execution---sometimes by government ‘death squads’. Even in the United States, the beginning of the 21st century, was fraught with so many examples of judicial intimidation threats, that two Supreme Court justices began speaking throughout the country to educate the public to this problem. In general, the more democratic and free a nation is, the more frequently the courts will disallow activities of the executive and even the legislature.
This concept of balance of power and the equal role of the judiciary is actually quite rare. Even in Parliamentary democracies the parliament can override any court interpretation. In England, the upper legislative house, the House of Lords, actually serves as the nation’s highest or supreme court. And these “Law Lords” can override all regular judicial bodies.
In 2002 the corrupt Indonesian Courts ruled that a very solvent Canadian company Manulife was bankrupt so that others could get control. The international financial and political community wanted the Indonesian government to intervene and reverse the rulings, but historically the courts had no independence and had been tools of the government.
The view that the Supreme Court was the final arbiter of constitutional controversies was not held in early America.
The issue of how the federal judiciary would be selected was one of the more hotly debated issues during the Constitutional Convention.
Jefferson’s fears were later reinforced by John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison {606468}
Hatch was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time.
Some of the Founding Fathers did not conceive of the kind of judiciary where Federal courts could nullify an act of the Congress by declaring a law unconstitutional. Morris was one. Others did. The Constitution is not very explicit on this point, but the nation has settled with a process that would have surprised Morris and a few others.
He, in a speech to Parliament, had criticized the Iranian Judiciary on several counts, He was then reprimanded for doing so.
Arlen Specter was an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1981 to 2011. Specter was a Democrat from 1951 to 1965, then a Republican from 1965 until 2009, when he switched back to the Democratic Party. First elected in 1980, he represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate for 30 years.
