标题: 【美选】为了司法公正，请选奥巴马 [打印本页]
作者: thesunlover 时间: 2008-11-2 01:05 标题: 【美选】为了司法公正，请选奥巴马
为了司法公正，请选奥巴马
闲言碎语 / DWNEWS
11月4日的大选不光要选出任期4年的总统，而且将任命几百个联邦法官，影响未来几十年。
布什政府已经任命了太多的党派法官。党同伐异，他们常常不能保护公民的自由。当前的最高法院有四个顽固的保守派大法官，而第五个动不动就制造出一个右派多数的判决。下任总统可能要任命三个大法官。这几个任命或许进一步极端现有的右派势力，或许把最高法院还原到符合宪法的平衡独立状态。
同样重要的是下任总统要在联邦低级法院任命几百个终生制法官。每年有360,000个案件递上联邦法院，%99.9的案件是在地区法院和上诉法院解决，而没有进入最高法院。%58的现有联邦法官是共和党总统任命的，其中三分之一是布什任命的。13个联邦上诉法院中，有10个被绝对多数的保守派共和党法官控制。联邦法院的平衡不再存在。
司法系统政治上的不平衡已经造成的严重后果。最近研究的20,000个上诉法院判决表明，凡是共和党法官作判决，即使违背政府决定，也要符合保守派理念。因此，当环保部制订法规要求清洁空气，或是国家劳工部为了雇员利益解决纠纷，上级法院的共和党法官往往打破了原先的民主党与共和党的制约平衡。
布什任命的法官一再否决美国人的自由和寻求平等的司法权。在案件丽贝塔告Goodyear中，布什任命的大法官Alito又演出了一场5：4的判决，否决了工人同工同酬的权力。法院判定同工不同酬的补偿只能补偿到他/她告发时的前180天，- 而无视这一基本事实，即丽贝塔同工18年，方知不同酬。共和党总统候选人马肯赞赏这样判决为“正确”。
– 篇幅太长，无时间翻译，请看原文:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/10/30/restore_fairness_to_the_judiciary/
原文作者: Michael S. Greco is past president of the American Bar Association and a Boston lawyer. Patricia M. Wald is former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Michael S. Greco is past president of the American Bar Association and a Boston lawyer. Patricia M. Wald is former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
作者: thesunlover 时间: 2008-11-2 01:09
Restore Fairness to the Judiciary
By Michael S. Greco and Patricia M. Wald
October 30, 2008
The Bush administration has appointed too many judges with partisan political loyalties who have failed to adequately protect citizens' freedoms. The Supreme Court now has four unabashed conservative justices and a fifth who frequently creates a rightist majority. The next president is likely to appoint three new justices. These appointments will either cement a far-right majority for decades to come or return the Supreme Court to the balanced and independent composition intended by the Constitution.
Equally important, the next president will appoint hundreds of life-tenured judges to the lower federal courts. More than 99.9 percent of the 360,000 federal cases decided each year are resolved in these appellate and trial courts, never reaching the Supreme Court. More than 58 percent of current federal judges were appointed by Republican presidents, over one-third by Bush alone. Ten of the 13 federal appellate courts now have wide majorities of conservative Republican appointees. Balance on the federal courts no longer exists.
Such political imbalance in the judiciary has grave consequences. A recent study of over 20,000 decisions documents that federal court panels consisting solely of Republican appointees consistently struck down government agency decisions that did not adhere to conservative ideology. Thus, when the Environmental Protection Agency issues a regulation requiring cleaner air, or the National Labor Relations Board resolves a dispute in favor of employees, a judicial panel consisting of Republican appointees is more likely to strike it down than a balanced panel of Democratic and Republican appointees.
Decisions by Bush appointees repeatedly have denied Americans freedoms and equal access to justice. In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber, Bush-appointed Justice Samuel Alito, writing for a 5-to-4 Supreme Court majority, denied workers the right to equal pay for equal work. The court ruled that a woman paid less than a man for doing the same job had only 180 days after her first discriminatory paycheck to file her claim - even if she did not learn until years later that men doing the same work earned more. Republican presidential candidate John McCain has praised the Ledbetter decision as "correct."
The Bush presidency has produced a right-wing judicial imbalance, one that a McCain administration would exacerbate. For decades, McCain has supported Republican presidents' appointment of arch-conservatives to the courts. He voted to confirm every Bush nominee, and has said he will select conservative judges and would not have selected Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, David H. Souter, or John Paul Stevens (the latter two Republican-appointed), judges widely respected for placing the law ahead of politics. McCain has appointed a committee to advise him on judicial appointments that includes the same people who advised Bush. These people understand the profound impact presidential judicial appointments have.
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has a different view of the role of judges from that of Bush and McCain. Obama, a Constitutional scholar, would likely appoint judges who respect the Constitution as he does - particularly its core values of liberty and equality. Unlike Bush - who dangerously has used "presidential signing statements" to decline to enforce new laws he does not like, thereby unconstitutionally usurping power from both Congress and courts - Obama would ensure that courts safeguard the freedom of all citizens, independent from political influence of the executive branch and Congress.
On Election Day, voters must consider the hundreds of federal judges that the new president will appoint. For good or ill, those judges will be on the bench long after the next president has left office. The quality of life for future generations, as well as the nation's longstanding commitment to justice and equality, will depend on whether those judges are impartial and fair.
Michael S. Greco is past president of the American Bar Association and a Boston lawyer. Patricia M. Wald is former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/10/30/restore_fairness_to_the_judiciary/
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