John Roberts is smooth and smart. Newly nominated Harriet Miers may be as well. What they both share for sure, however, is their avowed promise to “follow the letter of the law.”
In this they answer the call of the “Justice Sunday” promoters to be non-activist strict constructionists of the law. In other words, they will make sacrosanct about any Act of Congress, regardless of how such Acts may interfere with more abstract Constitutional principles like “equal protection,” “due process,” “right of privacy” and the like.
Judge Roberts has already proved his mettle. He ruled that the police did not violate those pesky rights by arresting 12-year-old Ansche Hedgepeth for eating a single French fry on the Washington Metro.
ONE FRENCH FRY, and the young girl was handcuffed, searched, hauled in a windowless police cruiser to a juvenile facility, FINGERPRINTED, and arrested! . Perversely, had she been an adult she would have been issued a ticket and released on the spot
And Roberts APPROVED this outrage as a judge on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals!
The esteemed chief justice John Roberts termed the eating of a French fry a “delinquent” act that warranted her arrest. It seems incredible that one who would so judge will sit as the leader of our nation's highest court.
His callous neglect of compassion and humane rationality brought to
mind another notorious stickler for the law, Joubert, the heartless pursuer of the saintly Jean Valjean in Les Miserable.
Judges judge, plain and simple. Their duty is to insure that laws are in accord with the spirit of our Bill of Rights. To simply accept a law, because the legislature passed it is NOT judging, it is rubber stamping, and it is a total abdication of their job to interpret the Constitution in light of the laws that lawmakers pass, state or federal.
Without this judgment “separate but equal” in education would still be force, there’d be no right to remain silent, no protection against discrimination and unfettered arrests of 12-year-old girls who eat French fries.
There is only one way an honest, intelligent judge can be “activist”: by refusing to judge. Rfd 10/4/05
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