The Heretik: Janice Brown, Armageddon's Awful Maiden Janice Brown

JANICE BROWN: STONE COLD VOICE OF THE STONE AGE
Janice Brown does not see herself as a black robed lady in waiting, she would lead the crusade to return judicial Jerusalem to its rightful heirs.  She holds high a flaming sword that would put to fire some settled concepts of law.  Janice Brown would take us back to some time before the Stone Age, judicially.  Property rights seem to matter more than rights for people.  She talks so often about "slavery" and a creeping "leviathan." She would have no problem overturning numerous cases of settled law and precedents.  Indeed it would be hard to believe she would do anything but that.  So why does any of this matter?  How could it not?

Janice Brown is about as far out of the mainstream as any judge in America could be and still be on the bench.  Why does this matter?  Even Republicans would admit, that by design our judiciary is intended to ensure fair application of our laws but also continuity within the political process.  Their chief complaint against so called “activist judges” is that they have not applied law fairly and in doing so have upset continuity.  The Republicans charge the judiciary oversteps and legislates.  Their myopic critical vision does not extend to Bush’s twice nominated darling Janice Brown.

Here is some of what  Janice Brown had to say before before the Federalist Society in 2000: Writing 50 years ago, F.A. Hayek warned us that a centrally planned  economy is "The Road to Serfdom." He was right, of course; but the intervening years have shown us that there are many other roads to serfdom. In fact, it now appears that human nature is so constituted that, as in the days of empire all roads led to Rome; in the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery. And we no longer find slavery abhorrent. We embrace it. We demand more. Big government is not just the opiate of the masses. It is the opiate. The drug of choice for multinational corporations and single moms; for regulated industries and rugged Midwestern farmers and militant senior citizens.

It is my thesis today that the sheer tenacity of the collectivist impulse — whether you call it socialism or communism or altruism — has changed not only the meaning of our words, but the meaning of the Constitution, and the character of our people.

Janice Brown would right all these leftist wrongs with one swing of her pen more might than any sword. Her penned legal opinions would cut out the heart of this country’s values as found in settled law. Whether she comes out of some dry desert where laws are dry and unwetted by real humanity, whether she is an avatar of a Constitution in Exile, I will leave for other more learned legal scholars.

I am but a lay person, one of many lay people who entrust our lives in large measure to the interpretation of laws by legal priests and priestesses. Brown’s exhortations, her high handed homilies, hurt my ears when my mind considers what her words actually mean.

More From Janice Brown’s Speech:  America's Constitution provided an 18th Century answer to the question of what to do about the status of the individual and the mode of government. Though the founders set out to establish good government "from reflection and choice," they also acknowledged the "limits of reason as applied to constitutional design," and wisely did not seek to invent the world anew on the basis of abstract principle; instead, they chose to rely on habits, customs, and principles derived from human experience and authenticated by tradition.

The great innovation of this millennium was equality before the law. The greatest fiasco — the attempt to guarantee equal outcomes for all people.

For those unfamiliar with the code, the attempt to guarantee equal outcomes for all people is shorthand for every program of the New Deal, for any endeavor by government to enter into regulation of spheres Janice Brown believes more properly belong to private masters, where property is the right most essentially guarded in her vision of America.  An activist of remarkable magnitude so far unremarked upon with any regularity by most of the press except in passing,  Brown simply seeks to rewrite seventy years of settled law.  No small thing.  A feat worthy of a crusader.  A stimulating thought for political debate, but perhaps the views of one unsuited for the Federal bench.

Brown’s legal opinions, particularly her dissents, in the pithy analysis of Stuart Taylor at National Journal, denounce as "the triumph of our own socialist revolution" the 1937 Supreme Court decisions upholding the Social Security Act, the National Labor Relations Act, other key New Deal programs, and state minimum-wage laws, while likening those decisions to the bloody Russian Revolution of 1917.  Called for the Supreme Court to return to its pre-1937 pattern of sweeping away many federal and state economic regulations by imposing severe limits on Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce and by reviving long-dead precedents such as Lochner v. New York, a now-infamous 1905 decision that conservative legal hero Robert Bork (among many others) has denounced as an "abomination." Portrayed the federal government as a "leviathan" that is "crushing everything in its path" and fostering "a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible."

Given what we now know about Janice Brown, the question is not whether they Democrats should filibuster Janice Brown's nomination if she would indeed be approved by the desired Republican "up and down vote."  The question should be how could the Democrats not do everything in their power to prevent this woman from further sending our country back into a legal Stone Age.

 

Comments

[Treban]

The neo-con agenda is bent on a seventy year legislative regression. What you didn't mention in your list of regressions is if one follows the logic then public education and child labor laws would suffer at least on the federal level. I would like to think that all states would pick up the slack but it is not unrealistic to believe that there are places in this country that would potentialy try to alter these laws at the state or local level.

Ultimately the uneducated are more prone to accept poverty as the norm. They are also more prone to find "job satisfaction" working at a low paying manufactureing or service industry jobs. And if it is better not to educate them, then why not put the little buggers to work. Oh, and we'll need to start em' young cause if you castrate OSHA it's a lot more likely they will be missing either mom or dad, both essential bread winners and the family needs that income. Also they will be needed to replenish the ranks of dying and injured workers. Buildings used to be partly defined by the number of workers killed during construction. Workers would die by the droves in fires in manufacturing facilities. Often times they were children. There are many states that would never allow such things to occur however many states are in economic situations that could neccessatate telling big companies who approach them and say, why yes we could deregulate this and, well, if your going to increse the tax base by X amount then we could probably allow you to get away with that. And if your thinking that the consumer is going to balk at workers in peril, think, all the advantages of China's labor pool, right here at home. Besides with lower wages and high rate inflation, consumers won't have a choice.

[Treban]

Oh and the whole point was the only way for the republican right to further there agenda and still get re-elected is to do it throught the judiciary. If they can manage to weaken these laws a little, score a victory here or there they can do signifigant damage to this country. Due ti the short term memory of the American public they can even use these same judges and their rulings to further erode Americans belief in our independent judiciary.

[Pepper]

Good gravy. This post got me looking up some info on Janice "Vigilante Justice" Brown. I found a lil' bio on the UCLA alumni site:

"Born in the segregated South, Janice Rogers Brown J.D. ’77 is a role model for all those born to prejudice and disadvantage, as she has overcome adversity and obstacles and, since 1996, has served as a member of the California Supreme Court."

A professional satirist couldn't have written a better bio. Gee, Brown might be a role model for all those born to disadvantage, but she's too busy kicking those same people in the teeth with her wack-job, Ayn Rand-worshipping ideas.

[Pepper]

OK, one last thought - what in heck is up with the Ayn Rand Plague? She sux. All these people like Brown who talk the Rand talk and walk the Rand walk sure ain't read her.

[eRobin]

Property rights seem to matter more than rights for people.

This is their creed. It really isn't any deeper than that.

[michael]

Justice Brown's comments in this speach are a breath of fresh air. The opinion that government intervention hurts a free market is a fact in economics. It is long past time for a justice with conservative views to be appointed to a position within the United States court of appeals. By the way, the speach that you mention is not a legal opinion. If you read any of the opinions Justice Brown has written from the bench you will find that she interprets the law as it was intended by the legislature and does not allow her conservative personal fealings to influence her rulings. Liberals like yourselves need to realize that the majority of this country lean towards the right. Instead of rejecting any person with a conservative point of veiw out right, you should consider the merits of our opinions and if you disagree do so in an intelligent manner. Propose better ideas instead of just opposing conservatives and you may even win a national election.