| Pronounced "New-Ahns" |
15 March 2004
|
Feeney-Goodlatte Resolution Fails to Understand Use of Foreign Cases
On the face of it, the Feeney-Goodlatte Resolution that few in the media have noticed is a good idea. It's a non-binding motion that would explain to the courts that Congress doesn't want them deciding matters before the courts according to laws from other lands. A fine idea, but that isn't what is happening. Instead, the courts are looking at the reasoning underlying the foreign decisions -- logic should know no boundaries. As it is, the ignorance of certain congressmen is boundless.
The congressmen are concerned by statements such as Justice Breyer's in a death penalty case from 1999, “A growing number of courts outside the United States … have held that lengthy delay in administering a lawful death penalty renders ultimate execution inhuman, degrading, or unusually cruel.” The judge was not saying that these laws of other countries apply, but rather than the US system should consider the legal reasoning behind these foreign decisions to see if there is anything to learn.
Grandstanding at election time by running against foreigners and the judicial system is cheap politics, and Feeney-Goodlatte is nothing more than that. Judges do need to be far more responsible in most countries of the world, and judicial independence should not be confused with judicial unaccountability. On the other hand, to accuse the third branch of government of something it is not doing and then condemning the non-existent practice merely serves to undermine proper and legitimate attempts to rein in the rogues.
Worse, Feeney-Goodlatte supporters, were they genuine in their concern, fail to acknowledge that America does not have a monopoly on reason. If Justice Breyer's statement about the cruelty of other nation's death penalty views tells Americans anything, it is that other people think differently. Most Americans in poll after poll accept the death penalty as a constitutional form of punishment; a great many other nations find it both cruel and unusual. The whys and wherefores of those different opinions matter substantially.
And what of cases where there is no American law (technology law evolves almost hourly), but courts elsewhere have ruled on arguments? Should the US taxpayer bear the burden of re-inventing the wheel, or could the court not take a short-cut by reviewing the argument. If a syllogism is true in Turkey, it remains true in the US. And if the argument or decision does not apply to American legal norms, saying so can't hurt -- after due and dispassionate consideration. Feeney-Goodlatte appears to feel otherwise -- the verb "think" does not fit that sentence.
Home