The Palladium-Item has a repugnant editorial on the subject of the Toll Road lawsuit wherein Judge Scopelitis has issued a decision requiring a $1.8 billion bond for the citizen’s challenge to be heard on its merits as to the constitutionality of the Toll Road privatization. The Pal-Item labels this decision “a victory for representative government and a setback to those who would seek to derail democratic processes by way of judicial fiat.”
I’m sorry that the fine editors at the Palladium-Item get annoyed by constitutional limitations on the authority of the legislature. But that’s the Republic into which they were born. I do not think it does our democratic institutions any good to bad mouth the processes by which we test whether the legislature has acted within its authority. “Judicial fiat” indeed.
The paper concludes:
If protesters don’t like their vote, elect different legislators.
Next case.
That’s fine advice, but it won’t get Hoosiers their Toll Road back once their right to manage it has been sold for the next 70 years. Thankfully, our forefathers left a legacy of democratic elections and judicial review. It’s not an either/or proposition.
Doug. I certainly agree. As I posted Saturday morning:
“I see this case, not as ‘frivolous,’ but rather as an important test of whether the General Assembly may craft statutes that effectively preclude or bypass judicial review.”
Maybe it’s always been this way, but over the past few years I’ve seen a willingness by politicians and pundits to dismiss the function of the courts as a check on the other branches of government and to be disdainful of the limits set by state and federal Constitutions.
But it dovetails nicely with labeling people who question our country’s military actions “unpatriotic.” It’s a scary trend.
Stupid is the P-I editors’ default setting. What I want to know is, what does Verna Cohee think about the toll road deal?
You know, I haven’t stumbled across either of the Cohees letters to the editor at the Pal-Item in a couple of years. In fact, the last entry in my “Cohee file” is from May 26, 2004 entitled “Democrat candidate is a Clinton clone.”
But one of my favorites was from Howard on September 8, 2003:
Leaving aside whether one agrees or not with Judge Scopeletis’ decision, I feel compelled to chime about (what I see as) the demagoging of judicial review.
The social purpose of law is to protect the weak from the strong. One of the purposes of a constitution is to set limits on governmental action. Judicial review is often the only thing that keeps those constitutionally based limits real.
The setting of an astronomical bond to kill the lawsuit challenging the toll road lease is a worisome precedent. Does it, in practice, provide precedent empowering the state government to preclude judicial review of any large government project?
On the subject of government, citizens, and Constitutions, I read this quote from Thomas Paine which seems somewhat relevant:
I don’t think governance by fait accompli was what the Founders had in mind.
It does, however, appear to be the current modus operandi of both Mitch Daniels and George W. Bush.