Quote:
Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy
As much as I hope Obamacare is repealed, there really isn't anything in the Constitution that says the Supreme Court is the last word on constitutionality. The Court gave themselves that power in Marbury v Madison, which is a horrible case in which Justice Marshall should have recused himself. Much like Justice Kagan should recuse herself from the Obamacare decision.
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The Constitution does not specifically give the power of judicial review to SCOTUS; however, Constitutional scholars say that it was widely believed by the signers of the Constitution that SCOTUS would have that power.
From Wikipedia:
A number of legal scholars argue that the power of judicial review in the United States predated
Marbury, and that
Marbury was merely the first Supreme Court case to exercise a power that already existed and was acknowledged. These scholars point to statements about judicial review made in the
Constitutional Convention and the state ratifying conventions, statements about judicial review in publications debating ratification, and court cases before
Marbury that involved judicial review.
[12]
At the
Constitutional Convention in 1787, there were a number of references to judicial review. Fifteen delegates made statements about the power of the federal courts to review the constitutionality of laws, with all but two of them supporting the idea.
[13]
Likewise, at the state ratifying conventions, over two dozen delegates in at least seven states indicated that under the Constitution, the federal courts would have the power to declare statutes unconstitutional.
[14] Professors Saikrishna Prakash and
John Yoo point out, with respect to the ratification of the Constitution, that "no scholar to date has identified even
one participant in the ratification fight who argued that the Constitution did not authorize judicial review of Federal statutes. This silence in the face of the numerous comments on the other side is revealing
Even if SCOTUS does not have legitimate power to exercise judicial review (which I do not believe) after doing it for 209 years in 158 cases I think the practice is not going to change. The legal principal involved here is called stare decisis, the concept that the court respects legal precedent set by prior courts.
I think the socialist/Democrats would love to be able to routinely ignore SCOTUS rulings against them. That would facilitate their ability to govern outside of the Constitution which has been their primary goal for the last one hundred years.