The battle for the Constitution?
Cal Thomas has an op/ed with the above title. Here is an excerpt:
- The . . . currently prevailing . . . view of the Constitution is the judicial philosophy of Justice Felix Frankfurter. Speaking of Supreme Court justices, Frankfurter said, “It is they who speak and not the Constitution.” That view was echoed in a 1958 Supreme Court decision (Cooper vs. Aaron): “Article VI of the Constitution makes the Constitution the ‘supreme law of the land’ .. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is .. It follows that the interpretation of the (Constitution) enunciated by this Court . is the supreme law of the land ..”
When the Constitution is not the supreme law, the Supreme Court will inevitably come to see itself as the supreme law. Charles Evans Hughes, who became chief justice in 1930, remarked earlier: “The Constitution is what the judges say it is.”
Thanks to Howard Bashman.