floundersgreatadventure

On Friday Supreme Court Justice Scalia died in his sleep and within hours discussions appeared everywhere. Some were concerned with the effect his death would have on pending cases, others were concerned with whether or not the president would nominate a candidate to fill the vacancy or would he wait for the new President to do it. Both of those options are assumed to be politically motivated. One would assume if a Republican is elected they would chose a conservative candidate and the Democrats would chose a liberal one. According to most broad definitions a conservative is one who wants to enforce traditional values morality and social mores. A liberal on the other hand is one who is open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values. Well I like to think I have a little of both in me depending on the issue. But getting back to the replacement of Justice Scalia I would think term such as honest, fair and just are better labels for a justice. There has to be some way to remove politics from the decision. The Supreme Court is supposed to be the final word in interpretation of the Constitution. I believe politics should not be involved in those decisions and that labels such as Conservative or Liberal shouldn’t be applied. Another issue that was discussed was should there be a mandatory retirement age since when the very first appointments were made life expectancy was only around fifty years and the Justices are appointed for life. Well if you’re going to do that then you should also get rid of some of the old dead wait in Congress and the Senate and then maybe you wouldn’t see the terms Conservative and Liberal used so much. This is Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin, Colombia.