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By Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq.
November 30, 2006
Not surprisingly, many people disagree with some Federal Judiciary decisions. Those disagreements range the full gamut of subject matter and of the cultural and political views of those who disagree. Too often we disagree with a decision based upon media and advocates’ renditions of the decision rather than upon the scholarship and legal reasoning of the decision. There also at times is confusion as to whether a decision with which one disagrees is that of a Federal or a State court or if the former whether the Circuit or District which handed down the decision is that in which the unhappy citizen lives.
Be the foregoing as it may, under our Constitution our country cannot function, and untold numbers of issues cannot be litigated, without a fully functioning Federal Judiciary. Thus, it is incumbent upon Congress to appropriate the necessary funds to operate the Federal Judiciary and upon the Senate to advise and consent to Presidential nominations upon the basis of merit and not leftist ideology.
Senatorial treatment - too often, gross mistreatment - of President George W. Bush’s nominees receives much attention. Free Congress Foundation, of course, devotes considerable time to the subject. For a change, here’s a word about the money side.
Federal courts in the Mexican Border States – California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas - are severely overburdened. Many other Federal courts around the country are in the same condition - for example, the Southern District of New York (which includes Manhattan, the Bronx, Westchester and other Counties), disproportionately handles litigation arising proximately or approximately out of the 9/11 tragedy.
When the docket of any court is jammed criminal and civil justice suffer. Phrased another way, anybody who is involved in affected litigation suffers - civil plaintiffs, civil and criminal defendants, witnesses, prosecutors, law-enforcement personnel, court personnel, often attorneys.
There has been much media, lobbying and other sources of attention on the dying 109th Congress - dying in point of time because under the Constitution its two-year lifespan is expiring, dying in a political sense in that upon balance the Nation’s November 7, 2006 voters expressed a fatal view of it.
There has been little or no focus upon the fact that the Fiscal Year 2007 (October 1, 2006 - September 30, 2007) Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, Judiciary, District of Columbia and Independent Agencies Appropriations Bill is one of more than a dozen appropriations bills as to which Congress had not finally acted before the November 7 election, much less (as it should have) before October 1, 2006. Rather, Congress enacted its not-uncommon fallback, a “continuing resolution,” a shameful device which merely continues a prior appropriation and does not address the need or wisdom to increase, decrease or otherwise adjust funds appropriated. The second such continuing reason, which covers the Federal Judiciary, expires on December 8, 2006.
Of course, Congress will do something in its short session. Neither the Executive, the Judicial nor - Heaven forbid! (if you’ll pardon the sarcasm) -the Legislative Branch will close down. Whether the Judiciary will get its requested and much needed $ 6.26 billion remains to be seen. The point is twofold: The Judiciary has made a good case for that sum; Congress should consider all appropriations in an orderly, timely and reasonably unpressured manner. The very concept of a continuing resolution as to a major function of the Federal Government is almost as disgraceful as it is disorderly.
Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq., is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.
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