Since 2004, the Supreme Court’s transnational progressive bloc has forged a novel — and, in my view, a damaging — judicial oversight role in American national security?

by ~ The Rebel ~ Posted 2012/05/24 14:28:36

Related Topics: Supreme Court, Obama, War, Progressive, Clinton, United States, muscles, Rights, Radical, 2008, America, Intelligence Gathering, Alien, Aliens, Court

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The Supreme Court Enters the Surveillance Debate

The whimsical Justice Kennedy’s alignment with the Court’s four-justice left-wing bloc (in which the two Clinton appointees, Justices Ginsburg and Stevens, are now joined by the two Obama-appointed justices, Sotomayor and Kagan, who’ve replaced retiring Justices Souter and Stevens) has created a majority for the radical propositions that:

America’s alien enemies are endowed with U.S. constitutional rights,
these rights may be vindicated in U.S. courts during the aliens’ war against the American people, and
“separation of powers” — which used to mean that the judiciary deferred to the institutional competence and political accountability of its peer branches — now means wartime political decisions derive their legitimacy from judicial imprimatur, not public approval.

For the most part, the effort to “judicialize” the political realm of national defense has been confined to the disposition of enemy combatants, specifically the process due for detaining and trying them. On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that next term it will enter the fray of intelligence gathering. The justices will entertain the Lawyer Left’s predictable challenge to overseas surveillance, which now occurs under judicial auspices thanks to wrongheaded amendments enacted in 2008 to modify the ill-conceived 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, also known as “FISA.” As is usual when the judges begin to flex their muscles in a new area, the first case is a camel’s nose in the tent: involving only the narrow question of “standing” — i.e., whether the plaintiff’s have a right to bring their suit — and not the merits of their claim that Fourth Amendment principles apply to searches targeting non-Americans outside the United States.

I. Car Rus 2012/05/25 05:53:36

+1
This is as true today as ever it was........"you dance with them that brung ye." It is rare indeed the Justice conservative, liberal or moderate who does not.

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Don 2012/05/24 14:45:05

+1
Elections count, and this is the most important reason to vote conservative.
If the lefty revisionists ever get a majority, this coutry is permanently screwed.

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~ The Rebel ~ 2012/05/24 14:31:21

To protect the nation from hostile foreign forces is the principal responsibility of the federal government. Primarily, it is the responsibility of the Executive Branch. The federal courts have held both before and after FISA’s enactment that the president is endowed by the Constitution with the power to conduct surveillance — including electronic eavesdropping — against “foreign powers” (a term of art that includes operatives not only of foreign governments but of such sub-sovereign entities as foreign terrorist organizations). If the president has that power, it cannot be reduced by a statute — it is black-letter law that the Constitution cannot be trumped by a mere congressional enactment. The federal courts were intended to have no national security role, particularly when it comes to foreign threats, both because they lack institutional competence in intelligence matters and, more importantly, because they are not politically accountable to the American people — national defense decisions being the most significant that a body politic makes.

In FISA, Congress imposed the federal judiciary on the Executive Branch’s domain by creating a specialized court (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) from which the FBI and Justice Department would thereafter seek permission...

To protect the nation from hostile foreign forces is the principal responsibility of the federal government. Primarily, it is the responsibility of the Executive Branch. The federal courts have held both before and after FISA’s enactment that the president is endowed by the Constitution with the power to conduct surveillance — including electronic eavesdropping — against “foreign powers” (a term of art that includes operatives not only of foreign governments but of such sub-sovereign entities as foreign terrorist organizations). If the president has that power, it cannot be reduced by a statute — it is black-letter law that the Constitution cannot be trumped by a mere congressional enactment. The federal courts were intended to have no national security role, particularly when it comes to foreign threats, both because they lack institutional competence in intelligence matters and, more importantly, because they are not politically accountable to the American people — national defense decisions being the most significant that a body politic makes.

In FISA, Congress imposed the federal judiciary on the Executive Branch’s domain by creating a specialized court (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) from which the FBI and Justice Department would thereafter seek permission before eavesdropping on an “agent of a foreign power.”

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