Samples of the Radical Attacks on Our Courts

Attacks by Elected Officials

“We have the constitutional authority to eliminate any and all inferior courts.”
— Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, April 2005

“I heard a minister the other day talking about the great injustice and evil of the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan, that roamed the country in the South, and they did great wrong to civil rights and to morality. And now we have black-robed men [i.e., judges], and that’s what you're talking about.”
— James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, on his radio show, April 2005

“To wait for the courts to decide would mean to follow suit with exactly what happened in Massachusetts. I am not going to run the risk of having Maryland follow that.”
— Maryland Del. Donald H. Dwyer Jr., R- Glen Burnie, responding to a decision by Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock in 2006 that a state law denying same-sex couples the right to marry violated that state’s constitution. Dwyer sought a legal opinion on the procedure he would need to impeach Murdock; the attorney general’s office said that process is only available for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” In March 2006 the Maryland House of Delegates Judiciary Committee voted 20-3 against a bill seeking Murdock’s impeachment.

“[Justice Anthony Kennedy] should be the poster boy for impeachment . … If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well.”
— Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, April 2005. (Kennedy authored the Supreme Court’s landmark Lawrence v. Texas decision. Others have also called for his impeachment, using wild insults, including describing the justice, who was appointed by President Reagan, as upholding “Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law.”)

“[This is] judicial activism at is worst. [Neary was simply] wrong. He should have backed away and sent them back to Vermont. If judges want to flaunt the law like this, I can guarantee you we will move to recall them.”
— Iowa state Sen. Neal Schuerer, R- Amana, who led a campaign to remove Judge Jeffrey Neary from the bench in 2003 after Neary’s decision to allow a couple to dissolve their civil union, which had been formed in Vermont. The recall effort failed, with about 58 percent of the voters in the district approving his remaining on the bench for another six-year term. Neary’s decision was upheld on appeal.

“I don’t know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. … And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have.”
—  U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in a speech on the floor of the United States Senate, April 2005

Attacks by Other Radical Critics of the Courts

“The Supreme Court has declared a constitutional right to consensual sodomy and, by the language in its decision, has opened the door to homosexual marriages, bigamy, legalized prostitution and even incest. … Would you join with me and others in crying out to our Lord to change the court? … One justice is 83 years old, another has cancer and another has a heart condition. Would it not be possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire? With their retirement and the appointment of conservative judges, a massive change in federal jurisprudence can take place.”
— The Rev. Pat Robertson, commenting on the Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas decision (2003) that struck down so-called sodomy laws. Since Robertson made this statement, the justice with cancer he was apparently referring to, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, has in fact retired. Another aging justice, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, has since died. Robertson later claimed he was not referring to any particular Supreme Court justices.