Personally, I see no reason for the court to uphold ambiguous language. They should rule as the law is written. If congress wants to rewrite the law, they can. The SC should not be fixing it or deciding what they think congress meant or what congress should have written in hindsight. The 4 liberal justices will vote in lock step in support of the law of course and the conservatives likely against it. Chances are it comes down to Roberts and/or Kennedy and I have given up guessing how either of them will vote on things. I hope they rule against it, but probably wont, so 5-4 in support.
I agree. They should take the law as they find it. Out of respect for the Constitution's separation of powers, the justices should not take it upon themselves to put words into the mouth of Congress.
On a related note, I would like to see the impeachment of Supreme Court justices taken seriously again. Only one has ever been impeached (he escaped conviction in the Senate trial) and the consensus seems to be that that was a one-time thing from Jefferson's day that is unthinkable today. But why the hell shouldn't it be thinkable?
The people of the states are the final arbiter of what the Constitution means, despite the Court's long campaign to arrogate that authority entirely to itself. Aside from impeaching justices, there are several other ways for the other two branches to nullify the effect of Supreme Court decisions. None of these things should ever be done lightly,
but that does not mean they should never be done. Recall, for example, that President Lincoln just declined to enforce parts of the Dred Scott decision. If we the people don't like something, we don't have to live with it.
Here is another way the Court may be checked. Congress was always meant to be the most powerful of the three branches of the federal government. When the will of the people is strong enough, their representatives in Congress can dictate to the Supreme Court what it may and may not do. A good example is Ex Parte McCardle, 74 U.S. 506 (1869).
In 1867, Congress had passed a law that authorized people who had been imprisoned to file habeas petitions to challenge their detention, and if denied by the court being petitioned
to appeal the denial to the Supreme Court. The purpose of this law was to help Northerners who had been imprisoned by the Confederacy, and were still languishing in captivity in the South, to obtain their freedom.
McCardle, a pro-Confederate journalist the army had imprisoned for publishing seditious articles, had used this law cleverly. He had filed a habeas petition challenging his imprisonment, been denied by the lower courts, and then appealed the denial to the Supreme Court. But an outraged Congress, seeing reb sympathizer McCardle taking advantage of a law it never meant to help the likes of him, was determined to put an end to that.
So it rushed through another act repealing the first one--
after the Court had already heard oral arguments in McCardle's case. This repealer act had the intended effect, which was to remove the jurisdiction to hear these appeals of habeas denials that the 1867 law had given the Supreme Court. The Court dropped the case, concluding its opinion with this meek observation:
"Without jurisdiction the court cannot proceed at all in any cause. Jurisdiction is power to declare the law, and when it ceases to exist, the only function remaining to the court is that of announcing the fact and dismissing the cause . . . ."
It's not clear how broadly McCardle can be interpreted, but it shows how forcefully a determined Congress can exercise its power to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Court.
"The Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make." U.S.C. Art. III, sec. 2, cl. 2.
