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The Trouble With Principles

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

1.       Judges - It is a pity that the left chose to take the path of corrupting the legal system in order to advance its agenda, but, having taken that route, it is now in a bit of a pickle.  How can leftists demand that a judge respect legal precedent (prior court decisions), when their entire agenda has been advanced based on judges’ ignoring precedent and, indeed, ignoring the law itself?  If a judicial nominee refuses to discuss his personal political views, saying that they are irrelevant to his job, which, indeed they should be if he is an ethical judge, then what can they say or do?  It will be interesting to see.

2.       Smoking bans and lap dancing – Louisville’s newspaper recently criticized some of the Metro Louisville Council members, who say they oppose a smoking ban because they want to respect the property rights of business owners.  The paper’s editorial said those council members were hypocrites, because many of them voted for a ban on lap dancing, which ignored the property rights of many business owners.  While the editorial was correct, it failed to mention that the council members who currently support a smoking ban but opposed efforts to stop lap dancing were just as hypocritical – ignoring property rights on the smoking issue while respecting them on the lap dancing issue.  Here’s a novel idea:  Why not respect property rights on all the issues and allow adults to decide for themselves which businesses they want to support? 

3.       Caring About The Poor and Downtrodden?  --   The Supreme Court’s recent Kelo decision on property takings is a perfect example of what happens when you support and encourage judges who ignore the plain meaning of the law.  The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution makes it plain that the government at any level (not just the national government) is only permitted to take private property for public use.  However, the court effectively changed the language of the Constitution, changing the words “public use”, which are actually in the Constitution, to the words public purpose”, which are not there at all.  These newly-imported words allow governments to take private property for just about any reason at all.  Of course, this will put a wealthy developer at a real advantage over a middle class or poor property owner.  The developer can pay off city council members or dangle large tax revenues in front of them and get them to force the property owner off his land at a “reasonable” (meaning cut-rate) price rather than having to negotiate directly with the property owner.  Unfortunately, once you accept that judges have the right to corrupt the law in order to get the outcome you want, you have no leg to stand on when they ignore the law to get an outcome you don’t like.  If the left really cares about the poor and downtrodden, who are harmed most when the rule of law is ignored, then the Kelo  decision should convince leftists to support judges who will uphold the law, not those who will make it up as they go along.

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