The problem with an independent judiciary in this country is that our judicial system is no longer independent. Our judges are supposed to be fair and impartial with an open and clear mind. Picture if you will the scales of justice, a women holding a balancing mechanism which holds “goods” and is perfectly level when empty. In other words, each of the two plates are an equal distance from the ground when empty As applied to the judiciary, as evidence and the law pile up on each side of the scales for the opposing parties, at the end of a trial, the side of the scales which has moved lower to the ground, wins the case. Today, unfortunately, judges have their fingers on the scale in favor of one litigant over another before the trial even begins. And this biased judicial favoritism is becoming worse for many reasons.
First and foremost, judges today have internal, personal biases and conflicts which cloud their judgment. They may dislike the personality or trial techniques of a particular lawyer and rule against that lawyer when that lawyer, if the facts and law were on her side, should have won. A more disturbing phenomena is political bias in the federal judiciary. The federal judiciary has become a politicized branch of government when, in fact, its existence requires it to be non-political. Its purpose in an ideal world, which the framers of the constitution strove to create, was to interpret laws of the legislative branch that were being carried out by the executive branch.
Let’s look briefly at what has happened since the framing. The legislative branch has become, against all warnings from Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in the Federalist Papers, brazenly and ferociously political. The two parties hate each other, all in the name of power and money. The executive branch is absolutely political in that the party winning the presidential election controls all governmental departments. Lastly the judiciary. The president in power appoints judges with the advice and consent of the senate. When the president and the control of the senate are in the hands of the same party, the seeds of judicial bias begin to germinate. The party in control stacks the courts with judges of their political bent.
Look at one example of thousands. Judge Stanley Bastian of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, granted a preliminary injunction Thursday, allowing Planned Parenthood to continue to receive millions of dollars in taxpayer funding under the Title X family planning grant program. The Trump administration’s rule, which bars the “co-location” of federally funded family planning clinics and abortion clinics is a conservative political position. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a democrat, boasted that his office “has filed 35 lawsuits against the Trump Administration and has not lost a case.” Appeals from this district court are brought to the infamous Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which has been stacked with democratic judges and is the court whose decisions are reversed by the US Supreme Court most often.
The judiciary is not supposed to become political, but over the years it has morphed in a judiciary of opposing political parties, just like the legislative and executive branches. We have reached a point of extreme judicial political bias. The only hope for a remedy is with the Supreme Court who now has five conservative (Republican) judges and four liberal (democratic) ones. Is that a neutral or partisan final arbiter? A deeply biased political judiciary will ruin this country, if it has not destroyed it already.
First and foremost, judges today have internal, personal biases and conflicts which cloud their judgment. They may dislike the personality or trial techniques of a particular lawyer and rule against that lawyer when that lawyer, if the facts and law were on her side, should have won. A more disturbing phenomena is political bias in the federal judiciary. The federal judiciary has become a politicized branch of government when, in fact, its existence requires it to be non-political. Its purpose in an ideal world, which the framers of the constitution strove to create, was to interpret laws of the legislative branch that were being carried out by the executive branch.
Let’s look briefly at what has happened since the framing. The legislative branch has become, against all warnings from Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in the Federalist Papers, brazenly and ferociously political. The two parties hate each other, all in the name of power and money. The executive branch is absolutely political in that the party winning the presidential election controls all governmental departments. Lastly the judiciary. The president in power appoints judges with the advice and consent of the senate. When the president and the control of the senate are in the hands of the same party, the seeds of judicial bias begin to germinate. The party in control stacks the courts with judges of their political bent.
Look at one example of thousands. Judge Stanley Bastian of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, granted a preliminary injunction Thursday, allowing Planned Parenthood to continue to receive millions of dollars in taxpayer funding under the Title X family planning grant program. The Trump administration’s rule, which bars the “co-location” of federally funded family planning clinics and abortion clinics is a conservative political position. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a democrat, boasted that his office “has filed 35 lawsuits against the Trump Administration and has not lost a case.” Appeals from this district court are brought to the infamous Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which has been stacked with democratic judges and is the court whose decisions are reversed by the US Supreme Court most often.
The judiciary is not supposed to become political, but over the years it has morphed in a judiciary of opposing political parties, just like the legislative and executive branches. We have reached a point of extreme judicial political bias. The only hope for a remedy is with the Supreme Court who now has five conservative (Republican) judges and four liberal (democratic) ones. Is that a neutral or partisan final arbiter? A deeply biased political judiciary will ruin this country, if it has not destroyed it already.
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