How much authority should district judges have?

JerryBobCo

It seems that every time President Trump issues a controversial executive order, someone on the left finds a liberal district judge who stays the order.

And, not to single out liberal judges, conservative judges did the same to some of Obama's executive orders.

So, the question is the following.  Should a district judges, who is appointed and not elected, have the authority to over rule a presidential order that affects the entire country?  I realize that such stays are usually challenged and go up through the court system, and sometimes even end up at the supreme court, but that process takes months or even years.

Opinions, please.

Jayhawker

They serve at the pleasure of the President....Trump's biggest foul up was not cleaning house after he was elected...Were it me, there would have been no holdovers from any previous administration...

Bigslug

A good topic for discussion that I'm eager to see pan out.

On the surface, it does indeed seem like the private telling the general that he can't order the charge.  However, the simple fact is that folks in the legislative and executive are popularly elected, not necessarily educated in constitutional issues (sad but true) and subject to a lot of knee-jerk whims of their time.  The judiciary is SUPPOSED to be the flag-waver that says "Ummm. . .slow down there, boys.  There's some things you haven't thought through".  That taking it all the way down to the lower levels of the judiciary is apparently within the rules is probably an extension of the wishes of those founding fathers who felt that the body that governs best is the body that governs least.

Frustrating if it's your side getting held up, but NOBODY being allowed to move 100% unilaterally ain't a bad thing.  Plenty of examples for why that is in the 20th Century.  At least that way there's some deliberation and consensus before the pogroms start.

Jayhawker

alphasigmookie said:

Jayhawker said:

They serve at the pleasure of the President....Trump's biggest foul up was not cleaning house after he was elected...Were it me, there would have been no holdovers from any previous administration...

I'm pretty sure that's absolutely not true. While the president gets to appoint most of the judges and they are confirmed by the senate, he cannot fire them as the constitution intended. It's 3 EQUAL branches of government.

JerryBobCo said:

It seems that every time President Trump issues a controversial executive order, someone on the left finds a liberal district judge who stays the order.

And, not to single out liberal judges, conservative judges did the same to some of Obama's executive orders.

So, the question is the following.  Should a district judges, who is appointed and not elected, have the authority to over rule a presidential order that affects the entire country?  I realize that such stays are usually challenged and go up through the court system, and sometimes even end up at the supreme court, but that process takes months or even years.

Opinions, please.

I'm with Bigslug on this one. I didn't see anyone complaining about "activist judges" when the judge in CA struck down the magazine ban? In the end these rulings are often just the first step in a long process that goes through multiple levels of courts and often ends up at the supreme court.

And then turned right around and stayed the judgement...

I left out the "If" at the beginning of my post...

Varmintmist

Striking down the mag ban was not creating law. It was not an activist move. It was stating that the new law is unconstitutional and therefore is not legal.

earlyagain

Check and balance.

Teach

Or in the case of Chicago, "Write a check and create some imbalance"!  Buy a judge and a prosecutor for a few shekels and do whatever you want! 

tennmike

ANY district or other judge that does not rule by the Constitution, but uses partisan politics is NOT a judge of law. They are a wannabe little tin pot dictator that needs a size 18 EEEEE boot buried up their butt so far it would take a backhoe a week to dig it out. Fire them early and often to get them to understand that the Constitution is the law of the land and no deviations will be tolerated.

Jermanator

I was thinking.. Tennmike said above that judicial decisions need to be ruled by the Constitution. I agree. To understand if they do and not... and instead of having to count on some media jackass to interpret, it is imperative that citizens can read these decisions and understand the logic and if it is consistent with the Constitution or not. In another thread, I mentioned reading levels. Then I put 2 and 2 together and wondered what reading level SCOTUS decisions are written at. The answer is 13.75... in other words, end of freshman year/beginning of sophomore year in college. Scalia has the record for writing one opinion at a whopping 18.16!

Anyway. I thought it was interesting. Maybe no one else will, but I did.

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/Whalen_PDF_5spbaaeu.pdf

tennmike

Jerm, you'd be surprised at how many really important documents are written at an 8th grade level and really dumbed down at that level. I have a technical writing manual here at the house somewhere that has instructions for writing technical specifications for some really serious nuclear stuff, and it's danged hard to write that kind of info at such a low level of understanding. Way too much gets missed in the dumbing down translation. That's a reason that so much is messed up legally now. Too much is left out that causes the essence and the arguments that make the point easily  missed. Sad that reading comprehension has dropped so far for that to be necessary.

ShannonHayes

NO ONE should have the power to over ride or go against The United States Constitution, the way so many judges, and others have been doing in my life time (I'm forty-one BTW).

Teach

I have participated in a couple of seminars that paired up a group of technical writers with "educators", discussing the writing of automotive service manuals.  At the time, they were being written at 8th. grade level, and there was a push to simplify the language for the benefit of some service department technicians.  At the end of the study, we discovered that to adequately present the necessary details for servicing computerized vehicles, the manuals actually needed to be written at the junior college level!  I was one of a very few participants in the discussions with experience in both the education system and the automotive service industry.  Most of the so-called teachers didn't have a clue about auto mechanics!

  

ShannonHayes

Teach said:

I have participated in a couple of seminars that paired up a group of technical writers with "educators", discussing the writing of automotive service manuals.  At the time, they were being written at 8th. grade level, and there was a push to simplify the language for the benefit of some service department technicians.  At the end of the study, we discovered that to adequately present the necessary details for servicing computerized vehicles, the manuals actually needed to be written at the junior college level!  I was one of a very few participants in the discussions with experience in both the education system and the automotive service industry.  Most of the so-called teachers didn't have a clue about auto mechanics!

  

All well and good, but what does this have to do with the power of district judges? I'm not meaning to be an ****, just wondering.

Jermanator

ShannonHayes said:

All well and good, but what does this have to do with the power of district judges? I'm not meaning to be an ****, just wondering.

Because I brought up the idea earlier that the typical SCOTUS opinion is written at a junior college level. So in order for a citizen to be able to read and understand the constitutionality of an opinion (instead of having it interpreted for them by some media clown-- doing their thinking for them) it is essential to have good reading skills.