From: pomi 
Subject: Hemispheric judiciary
Message-ID: 
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 1995 03:25:37 -0500 (EST)

If you recall, I mentioned a meeting of all the Chief Justices of this
hemisphere meeting in this country and forming some kind of group.

Apparently, they formed an organization with a charter that needs to
be ratified by all the member countries.  Around 28 of them. The
ratifying body in this country is the Judicial Conference.  (It was on
C-SPAN.)

What do they need an organization and charter for unless they plan to
cooperate for some reason?   Who wants our courts cooperating or
merging with those of Guatemala or Panama?  One panelist in the
discussion said that all the judges in this hemisphere can learn from
each other on questions like due process, even granted (he said) that
the concepts vary from country to country.

You know what?
If judges from Banana Republics like mexico want to know about due
process in this country, they can go to the library and look it up.
The info is there and is free.   There are very explicit descriptions
of due process in cases they are free to read.  Why should we have an
formal organization to pass on publicly-available information to
judges from countries with different laws and legal systems?

If I'm arrested and have a trial, I will make my due process claims
based on what is said in cases on that subject.  I don't have any
meeting with Rehnquist et al to inform me of what due process is.  if
it's good enough for me -- and I'm going to go jail based on pages in
a book -- then it's sufficient for the intelletual education of people
who have nothing to do with it.

Now there was another interesting fact brought out. Someone said that
"The appellate judges of the world" just met in Canada. Did you know
that?  That there's a body called "the appellate judges of the world"?
And they just met?   Why?

I don't know if anyone's noticed, but every country that international
buttinskies intervene in ends up with a "constitutional court." I have
nothing against this per se, but the facts indicate that it was
planned because it ends up everywhere.  Russia, South Africa, proposed
for Bosnia, to name a few.

In these countries, there are other courts to deal with
nonconstitutional issues.  The entire system is different. I knew that
people are concerned about the federal judiciary and dislike the fact
that judges are appointed for life.  But our system is precious.
Lifetime appointments remove the political taint from the judiciary.
We want an independent judiciary and we want the system we have from
article III.  We do not want the politicians to come in and change our
system.  We do not want the constitutional court that shows up in
every country touched by the new world order.

We do not want secret meetings of the world government planners in
Europe attended by Ginsburg and Breyer. Although there are some
problems caused by court rulings in this country, we want to retain
the independence of our judiciary.  The minute we merge with ANY other
judiciary, our rights and the separation of powers will go down the
drain and we will have NO WAY to recover them.  Once you get the world
court, you've got the world law and its producer, administrator and
dictator -- the world government.

---SnetMgr 0.60 [r0001]
 * Origin: snet-l@world.std.com <-> FidoNet (1:330/202)