North Carolina lawmakers approved this year a change that will lead to retention elections for state Supreme Court justices. As Andrew McCarthy reports for National Review Online, it’s an idea one presidential candidate would like to extend to the federal level.
Within the space of just 48 hours, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the president is above the law; that straightforward statutory words may be twisted to mean the opposite of what they say; that discrimination — heretofore, the textbook example of a willful act — can be committed unconsciously, thereby supplanting our constitutional foundation of equal opportunity for all with the totalitarian’s dream of guaranteed outcomes for favored factions; and that five politically unaccountable lawyers, by dint of being issued robes, may impose their vision of the good society on 320 million Americans, reimagining our most basic institutions, our founding law, centuries of jurisprudence, and millennia of civilization.
Like millions of Americans, Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) thought this was a disastrous couple of days for the country. So did the rest of the Trumped-up cavalcade of GOP presidential hopefuls — or, at least, they said they did. Cruz, however, undertook to do something about it. He proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would subject the justices to retention elections. …
… Our would-be overlords would be required to account to us if they wanted to continue ruling us. Here at National Review last week, the senator outlined his proposal: The justices would face the voters every eight years, earning retention only if they are approved by a popular national majority plus majorities in at least half of the states.
