The Supreme Court on Trial, Day 2: Let's Dig Up Thurgood Marshall and Yell at Him!

Elena Kagan is back this morning, testifying as an expert witness in the trial of America’s very recent history! One thing some senators are hoping for is a conviction, on the grounds that he is evil, of former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He may have died in 1993 but we can still get him on something! Even though Kagan is defending his abhorrent record!

They’re trying really hard: “Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the panel, branded Marshall a ‘well-known activist.’ Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Marshall’s legal view ‘does not comport with the proper role of a judge or judicial method.’ Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) pronounced Marshall ‘a judicial activist’ with a ‘judicial philosophy that concerns me.’”

I’m sure his son, who was sitting in the room right there yesterday (and who is, quite unfortunately, on the board of the Corrections Corporation of America, a massive private prison contractor that actively lobbies for stricter sentencing in criminal cases), really enjoyed all this. We can only hope today that Kagan renounces “results-oriented judging,” as Sen. Jon Kyl (Crazy-Arizona) keeps putting it.

Lest we forget: “Thurgood Marshall’s legal philosophy was so far outside the mainstream that before he was named to the Supreme Court, he had won only 29 of the 32 cases he argued before it as an attorney. In his 24 years on the court, he continued to pursue the radical doctrine that the courts needed to protect the rights of people who were otherwise unprotected.”

I hope we go after JOHN MARSHALL today, while we’re digging up corpses and putting them on trial. That power-mad Marshall elevated the Supreme Court above all the other branches of government. Then he went on to subject the states to the laws of the federal government! And then he undermined states rights further, by subjecting interstate trade to the whims of those nitwits in Congress! Why did he hate states rights? This sort of judicial activism is intolerable.