WHEN THE Senate Judiciary Committee begins confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor tomorrow, Americans will have an opportunity to evaluate her qualifications and judicial philosophy. But it may be more illuminating for us to reexamine the powers of the Supreme Court itself – especially its power to declare unconstitutional laws that are enacted by the democratically elected branches of the federal government. In the Supreme Court’s ruling of June 22 on a challenge to the landmark Voting Rights Act, Justice John Roberts wrote that finding an act of Congress unconstitutional is the “gravest and most delicate’’ task the justices have. Grave and delicate, indeed.
Let us for a few minutes think like true “originalists’’ who respect the original intentions of the framers of the Constitution when they drew up their blueprint for American government in 1787.
Why did the framers give the court that extraordinary veto power? The answer: They did not. This was not an oversight. Judicial supremacy had no place in their carefully calculated blueprint for checks and balances.
