Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Democracy has no role in forming a "national consensus"

Democracy must also be passe'
Justice Anthony Kennedy has many attributes, but judicial modesty isn't one of them. His latest legislative diktat in the guise of a legal decision--issued yesterday in Roper v. Simmons--overturns 19 state laws on behalf of a "national consensus" that he alone seems to have defined.
...
Perhaps the most troubling feature of Roper is that it extends the High Court's recent habit of invoking foreign opinion in order to overrule American laws. 'It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty,' Justice Kennedy writes. We thought the Constitution was the final arbiter of U.S. law, but apparently that's passe'.
I wrote here that now that the media is much more balanced and no longer dominated by the left, that academia is the sole major institution of American society that the left still holds a monopoly. I was slightly wrong. The judiciary, though not completely dominated by the left, is when it comes to social issues. This Roper opinion is the prototypical decision of the high court forcing a left-wing agenda down the throats of the American people WITHOUT allowing democratic institutions to control a major issue. This decision is a prime example of forcing an agenda on people that can't be won through democratic means, the last bastion of left wing governmental control in our society. The judiciary is where the unpopular but elitest ideology passes and where majority rule means nothing.

Anti-majoritarian, indeed.