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Liz WASHINGTON Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she and former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor have been the targets of death threats from the "irrational fringe" of society, people apparently spurred by Republican criticism of the high court. Ginsburg revealed in a speech in South Africa last month that she and O'Connor were threatened a year ago by someone who called on the Internet for the immediate "patriotic" killing of the justices. Conservative commentator Ann Coulter joked earlier this year that Justice John Paul Stevens should be poisoned. Over the past few months O'Connor has complained that criticism, mainly by Republicans, has threatened judicial independence to deal with difficult issues like gay marriage. Three quarters of the nation's 2,200 federal judges have asked for government-paid home security systems, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said this week. Ginsburg said the Web threat was apparently prompted by legislation in Congress, filed by Republicans, that would bar judges from relying on foreign laws or court decisions. "It is disquieting that they have attracted sizable support. According to Ginsburg, someone in a Web site chat room wrote: "Okay commandoes, here is your first patriotic assignment ... Supreme Court Justices Ginsburg and O'Connor have publicly stated that they use (foreign) laws and rulings to decide how to rule on American cases. This is a huge threat to our Republic and Constitutional freedom. If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then those two justices will not live another week." Ginsburg pointed out that the legislation was first proposed in 2004, an election year. Justices, in some of their most hotly contested rulings, have looked overseas. Last year, for example, justices barred the executions of juvenile killers on a 5-4 vote. Justice Anthony M Kennedy said then that "it is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty." In an angry dissent to that decision, Justice Antonin Scalia said capital punishment policy should be set by states, not "the subjective views of five members of this court and like-minded foreigners." Ginsburg said, "Critics in Congress and in the media misperceive how and why US courts refer to foreign and international court decisions." O'Connor said last week during a speech at Georgetown Law School that the justices have received threats. But the Ginsburg remarks at the Constitutional Court of South Africa provide unusual detail. Ginsburg, who turned 73 Wednesday, told the audience O'Connor "remains alive and well _ as for me, you can judge for yourself."
Three paramedics were boasting about improvements in their respective ambulance team's response times. "But by using a computer model of traffic patterns, we we cut our average time by 20 percent." "Since our ambulance driver passed the bar exam, we've cut our emergency response time in half!"
View Replies To: Liz Perhaps, just perhaps, they should wonder about this. Americans are normally fairly laid back about most things. I'm sure it couldn't be that people see things as getting dangerously out of sync, a court that for some reason can over rule the executive and legislature. A court that seems to just make up law as it goes along. A court that is oblivious and impervious, or worse, to the effects of its decisions. None of this would make people start thinking the court is nothing more than a domestic enemy.
View Replies To: Liz Ginsburg has devoted her life to breaking down the traditional protections of good manners, standards of what is permissible to say and what is not, and now she's shocked! Not that she's capable of recogizing cause and effect, of course.
View Replies To: Liz It comes with the job, I'm sure President Bush receives more threats than any other political figure but you don't hear him whining. The courts deserve the criticism they get and in more principled times their lives would indeed be in danger if only from the threat of imprisonment.
View Replies To: Liz immediate "patriotic" killing of the justices. The left has loudly been proclaiming their "Patriotism" to all who will listen (and to many of us who would prefer not to). Maybe they are mad at Ruth 'Buzzi' Ginsberg because she has not done enough for their cause?
View Replies To: Hawk1976 "Perhaps, just perhaps, they should wonder about this. Americans are normally fairly laid back about most things. I'm sure it couldn't be that people see things as getting dangerously out of sync, a court that for some reason can over rule the executive and legislature. A court that seems to just make up law as it goes along. A court that is oblivious and impervious, or worse, to the effects of its decisions. None of this would make people start thinking the court is nothing more than a domestic enemy."
View Replies To: Liz With the number of nut cases in our country, I'm not surprised there are threats against them. I think it's a stretch to say most come from conservatives.
View Replies To: Liz I doubt that anyone who would even think about such acts would actually write about it. I will have to conclude that the threats were made by somebody from their own agenda to stifle honest public dissent and dissatisfaction. There must have been a time in this country that the supreme court justices didn't have to worry about these kind of threats in that they didn't render any opinions that remotely deserved that kind of attention.
View Replies To: Liz Ginsburg said, "Critics in Congress and in the media misperceive how and why US courts refer to foreign and international court decisions." html Another trenchant critic, Seventh Circuit US Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner, commented not long ago: "To cite foreign law as authority is to flirt with the discredited . or to suppose fantastically that the world's judges constitute a single, elite community of wisdom and conscience." Judge Posner's view rests, in part, on the concern that U S judges do not comprehend the social, historical, political, and institutional background from which foreign opinions emerge. Nor do we even understand the language in which laws and judgments, outside the common law realm, are written. Judge Posner is right, of course, to this extent: Foreign opinions are not authoritative; But they can add to the store of knowledge relevant to the solution of trying questions. Yes, we should approach foreign legal materials with sensitivity to our differences, deficiencies, and imperfect understanding, but imperfection, I believe, should not lead us to abandon the effort to learn what we can from the experience and good thinking foreign sources may convey. We refer to decisions rendered abroad, it bears repetition, not as controlling authorities, but for their indication, in Judge Wald's words, of "common denominators of basic fairness governing relationships between the governors and the governed." U S jurists honor the Framers' intent "to create a more perfect Union," I believe, if they read the Constitution as belonging to a global 21st century, not as fixed forever by 18th-century understandings. In a headline 2002 decision, Atkins v Virginia, a six-member majority (all save the Chief Justice and Justices Scalia and Thomas) held unconstitutional the execution of a mentally retarded offender. The Court noted that "within the world community, the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed by mentally retarded offenders is overwhelmingly disapproved."
ourt's role in keeping the United States in step with them." Among examples from that Term, I would include the Michigan University affirmative action cases decided June 23, 2003. Although the Court splintered, it upheld the Michigan Law School program. In separate opinions, I looked to two United Nations Conventions: the 1965 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, which the United States has ratified; and the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which, sadly, the United States has not yet ratified. Both Conventions distinguish between impermissible policies ...
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