As a follow up to my last Celsius Heat, in which I discussed the non – issues plaguing our government and our courts, and the inability of our elected officials to separate themselves from social and religious issues, which should have been given the Chinese Wall by our First Amendment, this morning I wake up to find that President Obama has nominated Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, to replace Justice Souter on our Supreme Court. You have to admit, the new President has Chutzpah. He just had to have a woman and a minority, to prove what a true leader we have elected. To hell with qualifications. To hell with the fact that this is a life long appointment, which may affect the nation for decades to come. To hell with all of that, just as long as he is able to keep the growing Hispanic minority on his voter list.

The last thing this nation needs is a activist justice on the high court, and Sonia Sotomayor is an activist justice. In her own words, she feels that her life’s experiences and her ethnicity qualify her for the position, rather than her experience as a lawyer and justice on the appeals court. Of course, she will swear to uphold the Constitution, as long as the Constitution upholds her own personal view of life. As a matter of fact, she actually has stated that these qualities would make her a better justice that a white male. If she believes that, she has no place on our Supreme Court.

In the first place, justice is supposed to be blind to such issues as ethnicity, race, religion, economic class and any other appellation one might have acquired by birth or gained through the successes in life. Secondly, as Chief Justice Marshall once stated, “it is the job of this Supreme Court to say what the law is.” By that he meant, and there is no question as to this fact, that the duty of the high court is to say what the law is, be it Constitutional or Unconstitutional, by means of a thorough reading and interpretation of the Constitution. The justices are not there to second guess the founders. There is no place, in that judicial activity, for one’s life’s experiences, one racial preferences and one’s view of economic fairness or unfairness. What is required is that one follow the letter of the law, rather than re – write it.

In other words, there is no room on the high court for Judicial Activism. It is not the duty of the Supreme Court to legislate. That is the duty of Congress. The duty of the Supreme Court, and thus its nine justices, is to take congressionally promulgated legislation and to determine whether same conforms to the Constitution. Nowhere in Article III of that document is there written that the Supreme Court promulgate law. That which comes before it is either accepted or rejected, in whole or in part.

As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court was created by our founders, with that very fear in mind. The court was the third branch of government, hopefully constituted by justices who were blind to political sway, with full knowledge that the other two branches could be and most likely would be, to a large or small degree, corrupted by politics. There was to be no politics in the high court, despite the method by which a justice is nominated and confirmed. Yes, political, racial, ethnic, economic bias and prejudice are seen throughout the history of the court. One has but to read such holdings as Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) to appreciate that fact. However, past excesses of our court should be a lesson to modern Presidents and Congresses not to make the same mistakes. The decision to nominate a judicial activist is another excess which is blind to the court’s checkered past.

Therein lies the problem with Justice Sotomayor. Not only has she not been a part of many major court decisions, but those few she has been a part of have shown her to not be a Constitutionalist but rather a bench legislator and social engineer, whose decisions are frequently overturned.

We know that the social engineering Democrats of Congress are as happy as pigs in slop, over this nomination. The question is what are the wimp Republicans in the Senate going to do about this nomination? I would guess most likely nothing. And why are the wimp Republicans going to do nothing? My best guess is that to filibuster this nomination would cost them Hispanic votes, and one has to remember that the major reason for any legislative decision is future elections rather than what is best for the nation.

The only thing I can say at this time is “beware of a social engineer wearing a black robe.” Unlike a Congressman, that black robe is “for life.”

JLK