More on judicial independence

Some of us are old enough to remember the billboards that said, "Impeach Earl Warren." Now there is a sudden new widespread interest in the issue of judicial independence, as evidenced by articles here, here, and here. This sudden new interest in this issue could not have come along at a better time for Judge John E. "I am not a lousy judge" Jones III, the judge who wrote the infamous Kitzmiller v. Dover decision. It now appears that the "judicial independence" argument is his sole defense of the decision. A few days ago he gave a speech about judicial independence at Kansas University, and according to Thoughts from Kansas he agreed to come to KU only on condition that he would not discuss the contents of his ruling or the process of the trial. At least once before he made an attempt to address an issue directly concerning the case, when he made the following asinine statement in a commencement speech at his alma mater, Dickinson College:

.....we see the Founders' ideals quite clearly, among many places, in the Establishment Clause within the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This of course was the clause that I determined the school board had violated in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. While legal scholars will continue to debate the appropriate application of that clause to particular facts in individual cases, this much is very clear. The Founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry. At bottom then, this core set of beliefs led the Founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state. (emphasis added)

And while speaking those words, Judge Jones was standing behind a lectern that had the college seal in front. The college seal -- designed by the founding fathers who started the college -- has a picture of an open bible and the Latin college motto which means, "Religion and learning, the bulwark of liberty."

I guess that Judge Jones decided that his above statement went over like a lead balloon.

Judge Jones' paranoid claims that he is a victim of threats to judicial independence trivialize the real threats to judicial independence. One of these real threats is so-called "jurisdiction stripping" -- legislative acts which attempt to remove the powers of the courts to hear certain kinds of cases. I consider federal court jurisdiction over all constitutional cases to be one of the foundations of our systems of checks and balances. The counterbalances of this judicial power are the power of Congress and the states to amend the Constitution and -- in extreme cases -- the power of Congress to impeach judges and remove them from office. Though the Constitution expressly gives Congress the power to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, IMO there is nothing in the Constitution that explicitly or implicitly gives Congress the power to limit the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts, though it is widely believed that Congress has such power. A lot of judges and other public officials just make up rules that have no basis in the letter or the spirit of the Constitution.