Re: Ken McElroy’s July 28 commentary, “Justices must act on case law, not personal beliefs”:

Mr. McElroy has a strange view of the Supreme Court. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that Supreme Court justices must “act on case law.”  In fact, beyond establishing its jurisdiction, the Constitution is absolutely silent on what the court may or may not do.

Since the very first court, the justices have interpreted the Constitution and its relevance to the laws of the land. Their role in the judicial process and interpretation, of course, rests absolutely on one’s personal beliefs.

Unless McElroy is willing to claim that every Supreme Court in U.S. history has been “wrong,” he is demanding that the institution abandon its own legacy. Indeed, the most important cases in American history have turned on the justices’ interpretations and not on the black letter of the law.  Perhaps McElroy can explain the case law “obeyed” by the Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803) or McCullough v. Maryland (1819).

But of course McElroy is not interested in the actual history of the court. His is just another arch-conservative voice pining away for a mythical past in which judges did not “legislate from the bench.” That concept, which is central to the conservative project to remake America, is meaningful only to those ignorant of even a basic reading of American political history. It’s also an absolute lie.

McElroy and his conservative kin are eager to have the Supreme Court legislate from the bench, so long as it legislates their way.

— Russell Burgos, Thousand Oaks