WASHINGTON (ABP) — House Majority Leader Tom DeLay continued his rhetorical assault on the federal judiciary April 7, despite more temperate comments from his allies in the Senate.
In a videotaped message to a group of conservative religious activists, DeLay (R-Texas) denounced “a judiciary run amok” and called on his colleagues to “to reassert Congress' constitutional authority over the courts.”
DeLay's comments were made for a Washington conference sponsored by the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration, a Religious Right group headed by former Southern Baptist pastor Rick Scarborough.
Scarborough said he and other activists began planning the conference — called “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith” — about a year ago to discuss how to deal with “renegade judges who exceed their constitutional authority.”
Religious conservatives are increasingly denouncing what they term “judicial activism” — when judges rely more on their own opinions about political and social issues than the letter of the law when making rulings.
“This nation cannot long exist in the vacuum of atheism that is now being enforced on us publicly by the courts,” Scarborough concluded.
DeLay had been scheduled to speak to the group, but instead joined a congressional delegation headed to Rome for Pope John Paul II's April 8 funeral. But, DeLay said, “The issue you've come to discuss is so important to me and to our country that I wanted to make sure I had at least spoken to you all for a few minutes by video.”
DeLay's comments came only a week after he denounced “an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary” in the wake of Terri Schiavo's death. The incapacitated Florida woman was at the center of a legal and political dispute over sustaining her life through a feeding tube.
State courts repeatedly ruled in favor of removing the tube, and federal courts declined to intervene — despite an attempt by Congress to force them to do so. DeLay suggested that federal judges should be punished for such decisions.
In his April 7 comments, DeLay said the courts' refusal to intervene in the Schiavo case and rulings on other controversial social issues were symptomatic of a widespread problem. There is an epidemic, he claimed, of judges ignoring the will of the political branches of government and ruling based on their opinions rather than the intent of laws or the letter of the Constitution.
In recent years, he said, “Unelected and all too-unaccountable courts have invented out of whole cloth…constitutional rights to privacy, abortion on demand and same-sex marriage.”
DeLay said the problem he perceives could be remedied by the other branches of government.
“I believe the judiciary branch of our government has overstepped its authority on countless occasions,” he said. “But I also believe the executive and legislative branch have neglected the proper checks and balances on this behavior.
“This era of constitutional cowardice must end,” he continued. “Judicial accountability is not a political issue; [judicial activism] is a threat to self-government.”
DeLay's comments following Schiavo's death received heavy criticism from Democrats, who said he was threatening the constitutional separation of powers and the independence of the federal judiciary on which our legal system relies.
Some of DeLay's fellow Republicans also seemed to back away from his sentiments. On April 5, news agencies quoted Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who worked closely with DeLay on the Schiavo legislation, as saying he believed the federal judiciary was “fair and independent.” Likewise, the New York Post reported April 1 that Vice President Dick Cheney disagreed with the idea of punishing judges for their rulings.
DeLay's critics have noted that well over half of the judges currently on the federal bench were appointed by Republican presidents — and that many of the judges who ruled on the Schiavo case were conservative Republicans.
In the last major decision in the Schiavo case, federal judge Stanley Birch, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, said that Congress — in passing the law that attempted to force federal courts to revisit state rulings — acted “in a manner demonstrably at odds with our founding fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.”
Brent Walker, executive director of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said much of the furor over “judicial activism” is misplaced.
“Nobody ever complains about judicial activism when they agree with the opinion,” said Walker, whose organization advocates for religious freedom and church-state separation. “People try to make a sharp distinction between interpreting the law and legislating from the bench. But which one that is is often in the eye of the beholder.”
But Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), filling in the rest of DeLay's speaking slot at the conference April 7, said judicial activism has reached a “crisis” level and that lawmakers have the right to do something about it.
“Congress is right to evaluate judges when they behave like unelected superlegislators,” he told conference participants. “When judges step out of bounds, Congress should in fact raise a red flag. This is not an attack on the separation of powers. It is Civics 101.”