|
Ivan W.
Parkins |
|
To order Dr. Parkins book, Perspectives For
American Society Contact |
|
©Ivan W. Parkins 2009, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author
and can be obtained by contacting,
info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
|
About Ivan W. Parkins: Dr. Parkins is a retired professor of
Political Science from Central Michigan University. He received his PhD from the University of
Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval officer
during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama.
He is a recent widower with three daughters, 3 grand children and 2
great grand children. Dr. Parkins has
written extensively, having authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column
for many years. |
|
Front Page |
|
Editors Note: Dr.
Parkins’s Grandson, Breton W. Hinkle, passed away unexpectedly on Feb. 14,
2009. He leaves his wife Jen, parents
Ray and Susan Hinkle, sister, Gretchen Hinkle, Richard and Kathy Bourque,
Father and Mother in law, brother in laws Kevin and Brian and sister in law,
Kelly. He was a graduate of Michigan
State University. Bret was a United
States Marine and had faithfully served his country with honor and
distinction. He will be terribly
missed by family and friends. He was loved by all who knew him. He was
buried with military honors in Holland, MI. See Bret’s life story at
http://www.lifestorynet.com/memories/45526/ |
|
WHAT IS THE PROPER ROLE OF A
SUPREME COURT JUSTICE? By Ivan W. Parkins The
need to choose a successor to Justice Souter makes especially pertinent,
again, the question of a proper role for Supreme Court Justices. And, how that question is answered may evoke another question, i.e. why
should Justices serve for life?
President Thomas Jefferson and his Anti-Federalist/ Democratic
Republicans were long frustrated by the fact that President Adams’
last-minute appointee, John Marshall, sat as Chief Justice for over thirty years. The Court under Marshall’s leadership
interpreted the Constitution as authorization for a vigorous national
government. Was
that federal government too vigorous?
Remember that it took more than seventy years plus a bloody Civil War
and Constitutional Amendments to decide the slavery issue. And, even then, it took another century to
make racial equality a vigorous American policy. Also, the Constitution itself provides, in
Article V, means for its own amendment.
Formal amendment of the Constitution is difficult and time
consuming. Do we really want changes
in the form of our government and liberties to be the products of one brief popular
majority? Actually, unpopular Supreme
Court decisions have often been changed in time as new Justices have been
appointed to the Court.
John Marshall sat through about two months of lectures on the law at
William and Mary College. Topics were
arranged alphabetically, and Marshall attended until somewhere in the
“Ls”. He then apprenticed in a law
office. He was later elected to
Congress and served in the Department of State. Today, Justices are usually products of a
four year college program plus three in an elite law school. Prior to WWII
their predecessors were largely corporation lawyers, and often reflected that
background. Now, they come mostly from
educational backgrounds, bureaucracies, and experiences that are very similar
to those of leaders of the political action groups who press cases before
them. How effective are they likely to be at reigning in excesses of the new
information elite?
Should the role of Supreme Court Justice be one of deciding cases
according to the rules as they were at the time of the dispute? Or should it include looking for new rules
as a means of deciding old conflicts?
And, if the latter, why appoint them for life?
Life time appointments for rule makers is almost the definition of
authoritarianism. |
|
Letter to the editor; THE WALL STREET JOURNAL unpublished 7/31/98
Your July 31 editorial “Justice Thomas’s Speech” is a first-rate
treatment of the contemporary scene, but much too conventional regarding the
history and theory of free speech.
Our Founding Fathers, i.e. the First Congress led by James Madison,
offered a formula for representation ratios as the first amendment. It remains unratified. Their second proposal was recently ratified
as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment. The
amendment which is now accepted as the first was third among those originally
proposed.
The screaming students whose behavior is rationalized as a
manifestation of free speech owe more to psychology, the popularizing of
self-expression long after the Founders became “dead white males,” than to anything
venerable.
Participation of the public in political dialog is the original, and
still essential object of free speech.
And, the Founders’ first proposal, keeping representation ratios at a
level which facilitates one-on-one communication between voters and their
Representatives, may still be a vital element of that. |
|
CREATING LIBERTIES? A
reprint of a column, THE MORNING SUN, 1/14/82 By Ivan W. Parkins
Unlike our Constitution, that of Britain is not a single document
enforceable in court. The British
people accept a collection of documents and traditions as basic rules of
their public life. British
constitutionalism is self-enforcing.
It is an important constituent of the tolerance and civility which
have long characterized British public life.
Although our Constitution has always been a legal document, and to a
large degree enforceable in court, its strength and its value rest in large
part upon the extent to which Americans revere it and apply it voluntarily. Applied in such a manner, the Constitution
supports and is supported by tolerance and civility.
Unfortunately, some Americans have come to regard the Constitution as
just another instrument in our adversary system of law. For attitudes of tolerance and civility
they substitute moral indignation and recondite dogma regarding individual
rights.
Fortunately, the dangers and causes of recent constitutional trends
are becoming more widely recognized.
Archibald Cox in his recent book FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION laments the
growing fragmentation of opinions from the Supreme Court. He also suggests a cause. He notes “the increasing use of law clerks
who write opinions to justify their Justices’ votes. Because each Justice has a number of law
clerks and typically none serves more than one or two years, a heroic effort
by a Justice would be required to impart unity of philosophy and authorship
to the law clerks’ drafts.”
Law clerks, incidentally, are usually selected from among the most
recent graduates of the Justices’ law schools. Do
we really want our constitutional liberties to be defined by the processes
recently employed? If they continue to
be defined in such a manner, is there any reason to believe that they will be
respected? |
|
Letter
to the editor; THE DETROIT NEWS, published
6/18/95
Thank you for publishing Thomas Sowell’s topical criticisms of the
U.S. Supreme Court. (“High court turns
10th Amendment upside down,” May 29.) But let me add a few points of background.
First, the Constitution leaves to Congress the power to create the
lower federal courts, to regulate both their jurisdictions and the appellate
jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and to determine how many justices the
Supreme Court shall have.
Second, the federal judiciary’s decisions invalidating or prescribing
acts of other officials on constitutional grounds have increased greatly in
this century, especially since WWII.
Third, prior to WWII, Supreme Court decisions holding that broad and
popular acts were unconstitutional seldom prevailed. Popular sovereignty in the form of
constitutional amendments, renewed legislation, changes of court membership,
etc. quickly overcame them. It
is only quite recently, when some members of the judiciary became
indistinguishable from the other political activists whom Sowell calls “the
anointed,” that the federal courts have been able to thwart in major and
lasting ways the will of the American people.
The emergence of the mass media as a potent instrument of political
influence and the alignment of most of the media establishment with
“anointed” members of the judiciary is, I believe, the best explanation of
the change. |
|
Letter
to the Editor; THE WALL STREET JOURNAL unpublished 4/4/07
Your “Jolly Green Justices” and their afflatus reek from the
partisanship of another constitutional branch. Of
those five who were the majority, three were nominated by Republican
Presidents. All were confirmed,
however, by Senates in which Democrats held majorities. All
four of the dissenters were nominated by Republicans, and three were
confirmed by Republican Senates. Only
Justice Thomas achieved confirmation by a Senate in which the Democrats held
a majority of seats. That Senate
approved Thomas by 52-48, not long after awarding Souter 90-9.
Confined by influenza, I watched, on television, the Senate
Judiciary’s hearings on Thomas. One reason for hope is that, after such a
vicious public beating, Thomas still believes constitutionalism to be worth the
cost of its defense. |
|
DO WE BELIEVE IN CONSTITUTIONALISM? The basic idea of
constitutionalism is that the method of selection of officials and the powers
allotted to them, as well as the rights of individual citizens, should be so
lasting that they can only be changed by processes more careful and widely
acceptable than the ordinary practices of governing.
I.W. Parkins The following articles
relate to the constitution, supreme court and the selection of a new supreme
court justice. |
|
Letter
to the Editor; U.S. NEWS and World
Report Unpublished 7/29/97 The
late Justice William Brennan’s attitudes (obituary, August 4) regarding
fairness were similar to those which I expressed in my major piece of
campaign literature, 1954, while seeking (unsuccessfully) a Democratic
nomination to Congress. . . .
Among the greatest of his innovations was establishing welfare as
entitlement, a constitutional right.
In his GOLDBERG V. KELLY opinion, 1970, the key case, he acknowledged
a debt to Professor Charles Reich of Yale Law. Reich had argued, in review articles, for
such a right to welfare benefits.
Reich is better known, however, for his GREENING OF AMERICA, also in
1970, a text of the youth rebellion, and one in which he acknowledges his
debts, not to our founders and political history, but to Karl Marx, Professor
Marcuse, and some writers of contemporary fiction. Justice Brennan was a man of his time; it
is less clear that he saw the value of continuity with the past, a basic
principal of constitutionalism.
What may be least understood by most Americans about Brennan’s
judicial activism is its unique record of survival. As Professor Robert Dahl of Yale (political
science) discovered, nearly all major judicial conflicts with the legislative
and executive branches prior to Brennan’s time were soon resolved in favor of
the elective branches. Only more
recently has the U.S. Supreme Court made numerous broad and lasting decisions
which became the policies of our government. Why; why now?
The answer, I believe, lies in the development and influence of the
mass media, especially television.
Alexander Hamilton’s famous prediction that the judiciary would always
remain the weakest branch of our government, because it controlled neither
the purse nor the sword, is invalid.
The media have become a major, if not the greatest, instrument of raw
power. During most of his long tenure
on the Supreme Court, Justice Brennan was in step with the media. |