Jonathan Westminster: "The 15% Solution" Serialization, 6th Installment, Chapter Five
This is the sixth installment of a project that is likely to extend over a two-year-period from January, 2010. It is the serialization of a book entitled The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022 . Under the pseudonym Jonathan Westminster, it is purportedly published in the year 2048 on the 25th Anniversary of the Restoration of Constitutional Democracy in the Re-United States. It was actually published in 1996 by the Thomas Jefferson Press, located in Port Jefferson, NY. The copyright is held by the Press. Herein you will find Chapter 5.
Note that in it, a firmly right-wing court decides that the Executive and Legislative branches, with their control firmly in the hands of the successor to the old Republican Party with no indication that that state of affairs will ever change, decides to remove themselves from any review of the actions of the other two branches.
Crossposted with http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3312 [print_link] Sat. 06/26/2010
Chapter Five
2003: Anderson v. Board of Education
Summary of the Decision (Supreme Court Bulletin)
Anderson v. Board of Education, Certiorari to United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
No. 101-11. Argued October 31, 2002―Decided May 13, 2003.Anderson v. United States was the most significant decision handed down by the Supreme Court in the old United States since Marbury v. Madison referred to in the decision summary reproduced above. In that case, Chief Justice John Marshall had established the power of the Supreme Court to review actions of the two other branches of the Federal government. As correctly noted by Chief Justice Steps that power is nowhere clearly granted to it by the Constitution itself. Nevertheless, Marshall said, if the Supreme Court found such actions to be unconstitutional, they were null and void. His reasoning went as follows (Cox):
The other was that he was the most celebrated failed Supreme Court nominee in the history of the old U.S. And his nomination failed precisely because he held to Constitutional theories that were completely at odds with those held by almost everyone else at the time considered to be an authority on the matter. But his time eventually came. The Court did adopt the theory he espoused so eloquently in so many legal papers and articles.
Summarizing the theory, Bork held that (1993):
A spirited attack on the theory of Original Intent had been offered a few years before Bork wrote the article cited above by Judge Irving R. Kaufman, a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals judge (1987):
Kaufman here is of course defending the expansive approach to Constitutional interpretation that led to the broadening of protections for individual rights that so enraged Right-Wing Reactionaries in the latter half of the 20th century and lead eventually to Anderson.
It is ironic that in his younger days Kaufman was the judge who presided over the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, accused of being atomic weapons spies, convicted, and eventually executed. Many people around the world thought the trial and the subsequent failed appeals process were possibly rigged and certainly major miscarriages of justice. Both Ethel and Julius were political progressives and he was an active member of the Communist Party. Ethel was almost certainly not a spy, and if Julius was, he was apparently engaged only in stealing industrial, not atomic weapons, secrets.
A Parthenon Pomeroy Diary Entry, May 15, 2003
References:
Cox, A., The Court and the Constitution, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1987, pp. 58, 59, 63, 66, 75, 342, 360.
Rodell, F., Nine Men: A Political History of the Supreme Court from 1790 to 1955, New York: Random House, 1955.
Schneir, W. and Schneir, M., Invitation to an Inquest, New York: Doubleday, 1965.
Wexley, J., The Judgement of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, New York: Cameron and Kahn, 1955.
——————————————-BarnesandNoble.com . You will find a “Sub-Home Page” for the serialization at the lower right-hand corner of the Home Page of www.TPJmagazine.us . It contains such items as the Disclaimer, cast of characters, author’s bio., cover copy, and several (favorable) reviews. Also it will have a full archive of all the chapters as they are published over time. Besides The Greanville Post, the serialization is appearing as well on www.BuzzFlash.com , Dandelion Salad and TheHarderStuff newsletter .