...Because in retrospect, our judicial system wasn't thought through by many of the founders ...
Considering that many of the Founding Fathers were lawyers and a number were judges, that's a bizarre contention.
....Article III
Section 1
The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.
Congress, as our elected representatives, has the power to remove any judge found to be acting outside accordance with the Constitution....
Exactly how do you reach the conclusion that "good behavior" necessarily means interpreting and applying the Constitution in the way a majority of Congress thinks it should be. The notion would eviscerate checks and balances. What legal or historical authority can you cite to support that preposterous reading of "good behavior"?
The concept of judges holding office during good behavior long predates our Republic and has its roots in English Law.
This paper, "Judicial Disability and the Good Behavior Clause", by William Pratt and published in the 1976 edition of
The Yale Law Review includes a good discussion, at pages 708--718, of the history of the principle of judicial tenure during good behavior, both in England and our fledgling Republic.
What constitutes "good behavior" was well understood at the time of the Constitutional Convention. As Mr. Pratt notes in his article (at pp 713--714, footnoted omitted):
...Another example can be found in the 1780 impeachment trial of Judge Francis Hopkinson of Pennsylvania. In its opinion the Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council wrote, "In the first place it is observable, that the commission of the Judge is during good behaviour; crimes only are causes of removal .... “ The juxtaposition of "crimes" and "good behaviour" made it clear that the mechanism for removal was irrelevant; no one could be removed from a good behavior office without having committed a crime. That opinion merely reiterates what had been said a century earlier in the English courts.....
As Mr. Pratt further explains (
ibid. pg 714, footnotes omitted, emphasis added)
....As Alexander Hanson, a proponent of the Constitution, explained in 1788, good behavior in a judge was not an ambiguous concept, but one related "to the laws, and things universally known." That shared understanding was reflected in the Convention's unanimity on the tenure for federal judges. In England judges were removable by an address of both houses of Parliament. But in their desire to insulate the judiciary even more and to eliminate any discretionary element in the legislature, the Framers rejected removal by address.....
And Mr. Pratt further tells us (ibid., pg 715, footnotes omitted, emphasis in original) that an opponent of the Constitution:
...complained, "There is no authority that can remove them from office for any errors or want of capacity, or lower their salaries, and in many cases their power is superior to that of the legislature." The order of the statement (tenure followed by salary provisions) indicates that the author was referring to the good behavior clause....
....Because what use is a document and laws when 9 unelected people can re-interpret it in anyway they choose?.....
It was indeed the intention of the Founding Fathers that we have an independent federal judiciary. To turn to Mr. Pratt again (
ibid., pg 718):
...The Framers chose good behavior tenure to limit the power to remove judges and to ensure judicial independence....
What use is a judge in a system of checks and balances if he can be removed from office simply because he disagreed with the prevailing mood of an elected body? As Hamilton tells us in
Federalist 78:
-
...The standard of good behavior for the continuance in office of the judicial magistracy, is certainly one of the most valuable of the modern improvements in the practice of government. In a monarchy it is an excellent barrier to the despotism of the prince; in a republic it is a no less excellent barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body. And it is the best expedient which can be devised in any government, to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws....
- And:
..The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex-post-facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing....
...There are no checks and balances from either the legislative or the executive on the judiciary....
That is simply not true, as I illustrated in post 26.
...If the judiciary determined that the original intent of the sentence "The sky is blue" means "The sky is green" then the sky is indeed green....
Phooey!
Judges, like like people generally, are human with their shares of human frailties. They aren't perfect, but neither is anyone else. But they are also well educated and have had to run a professional gauntlet to rise in their professions.
It's a great myth that the judiciary acts with no constraint.
First, of course, what courts do is in the public eye, and judges function in a fishbowl. They must justify their decisions, and those justifications are subject to public scrutiny and criticism. The decisions of trial court judges are subject to review on appeal. The decisions of appellate courts are made by a majority of a multi-judge panel.
Every judicial organization has a supervisor committee of judges, usually called a "judicial council" which has a wide range of responsibilities associated with the conduct of business by the courts, including monitoring of the conduct and behaviors of judges. Such judicial councils can, and have, intervened in cases of severely aberrant behavior or egregious misconduct by a judge.
And then there is a fundamental human reality: people, other than sociopaths and psychopaths, are concerned about their reputations, especially among their peers. Professionals like doctors, lawyers, judges, etc., who have studied and worked hard and long to achieve some level of success and prominence in their professions tend to care both about being professionally respected by their peers, and the usages and traditions of their professions. There is such a thing as [professional] conscience, and in the real world that is a constraint.
In every profession there are bad apples. That is the way of humanity. But in real life the vast majority of doctors try very hard to be honest and diligent in their professional lives and to properly and competently practice their profession. The same can be said of lawyers and judges.
It's true that bad things can happen to lousy doctors, lawyer or judges. They can be stymied in reaching their professional and economic goals. They can lose their licenses or positions. In extreme cases they can go to jail. Some have suffered all those bad outcomes.
Sometimes patients die (as people, especially sick people, will do). Sometimes lawyers lose (and often because their clients were in the wrong). Sometimes we might not like the result of a judge's decision (but maybe what we really need to think about is changing the law). Nonetheless, the vast majority of the time doctors, lawyers and judges are trying hard to do things properly and well.
And the judiciary, as other branches of government, is still subject to checks and balances. So if a judge's decision is unsatisfactory, the ball might well be in the court of the legislature.
Of course there can be genuine professional disagreement about things. The fact that I might, professionally, conclude that a particular decision of a court was wildly off base doesn't translate to a conclusion that it was the product of evil intent, dishonesty or chicanery. And we return to the fundamental fact that insofar as there may be disagreement about what the Constitution means or how it applies the Founding Fathers intended that disagreement to be resolved by the federal courts.
....the District Court judge who ruled in favor of Miller was EXTREMELY pro gun control. A lot of people believe he ruled in favor of Miller's case knowing it'd go to the SCOTUS but Miller, due to his criminal background and apparently informing on his associates, would immediately go into hiding and never show at the SCOTUS hearing....
"A lot of people"? What "people"? Upon what evidence do they contend that? Upon what evidence do you give what appears to be merely an empty rumor enough credence to bother passing it on?
