Wanted: A Good Amendment

President Bush makes a pretty good case for a constitutional amendment that pretty much defines marriage from the federal government's point of view. As it's currently proposed, I'm not so sure that I'd go along with it. While it's very true that there are a lot of "activist judges" who are making up laws as they go along, the idea of modifying the constitution mainly to give a definition of marriage seems pretty weak to me. The real problem is the "activist judges". The U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit is a frequently used example of judicial activism run amok, but it's not the only one. Florida's Supreme Court is another one. It does pretty much what it wants, including making up election laws (get a brief refresher course on Florida's Presidential Election 2000). Now of course, the Massachusetts Supreme Court is anteing up its own two cents worth. Activist judges, it seems, are all over the place.

It seems to me that amendments to the constitution should be directed for or against broad, sweeping concepts, not single words. The Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments) and the 27th Amendment are great examples of mostly concise ideas that were well conceived over two hundred years ago. How did they do that? There's very little vagueness in them, probably due to an effort to make these words be relevant for generations, and not just the 6 o'clock news. I can't come up with a one or two sentence example of how to effectively curtail judicial activism, but then I'm not a lawmaker (be glad for that). We have over 500 lawmakers in the U.S. Congress that were just begging to be there, and spent huge time and money to get there, so maybe some of them might just possibly be up to the task. It really doesn't seem too much to ask. Isn't that what they're there for?

Possibly there should be some small risk involved with making up laws in the courts, like a "what were you thinking?" rule when a judgment gets overturned by a higher court. Have the judges involved defend their opinions, publicly, possibly before a panel, not just with their written opinions. Shouldn't John Q. Public see, out in the open, the fuzzy thinking that was involved in that bad decision? Maybe a limit on appeal court judges on how many times you can be overturned before you're booted out of the court system. Shouldn't everybody be held responsible for their actions, and own the consequences of their decisions? Uh-oh! Could that be the problem?

The fact is, judges aren't held responsible for how they decide cases, especially on appeals. The fact is, many (not all) judges are appointed for life, which was intended to make them immune from day to day political pressures. Noble thought. Now who is going to protect the public when a judge decides to exert political pressure of his own? While it seems that giving judges that immunity has been accomplished fairly well, that immunity has apparently expanded over the years, and now often includes immunity from common sense and rationality as well. All judges need to be held responsible for how they rule, and that's what this amendment should be about.