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July 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person

Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya

July 1, 2009

Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken

The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts

June 30, 2009

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?

Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief

June 29, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'

Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas

June 26, 2009

Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain

Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law

June 25, 2009

Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 24, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity

The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun

June 23, 2009

Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin

Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect

June 22, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm

N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?

June 19, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity

June 18, 2009

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 17, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …

June 16, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel

Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity …

June 15, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'

Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed

June 12, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner

June 11, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President

Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers

Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos

June 10, 2009

Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste

June 9, 2009

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?

June 8, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?

Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past

Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?

June 5, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams

Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth

June 4, 2009

Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock

The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette

June 3, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action

June 2, 2009

Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 3, 2008 / 27 Adar II 5768

Imperial, exclusive Supreme Court of the United States

By Nat Hentoff


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I dearly wish our Founding Fathers James Madison and Alexander Hamilton had been able to see Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas explain on C-SPAN's "America and the Courts" (March 28) why they and nearly all their colleagues are so hostilely against allowing millions of Americans to see the High Court on television during the revealing oral arguments.


On that C-SPAN program, in excerpts from the Kennedy-Thomas testimony before a House committee, Kennedy, sternly lecturing that Congress should not legislate this intrusion into a key process in how and why they make their decisions, which affect so many of us, explained: "We teach that we're judged by what we write and by what we decide. ... I do not want an insidious dynamic introduced into my court that would affect the relations that I have with my colleagues.


"It would be unhelpful for the collegial relations. ... I don't want to think that one of my colleagues asked a question because he or she was on TV. And I don't want that temptation to exist. ... We (Justices) think that we should be entitled to at least a presumption of correctness and to some deference in determining how best to preserve the dynamic of the wonderful proceeding that we know as oral argument." Agreeing, Thomas said, "The concern is that you begin to have a sort of a tabloid effect because of the personalities involved as opposed to the substance of the case."


From their high seats above us all, both these Justices ignore that they serve on a public court, paid by taxpayer funds; and because of increasingly limited coverage of the Supreme Court in newspapers and on both broadcast and cable television, many Americans know little of these nine distant arbiters of our rights and liberties in so many spheres of our existence.


As a member of the press, having been at some oral arguments, I can testify that in the exchanges between the justices and the lawyers before them — as well as during the often testy, barely disguised criticisms by the justices of one another — the temperaments and characters of these loomingly powerful deciders of what we can and can't do with our lives illuminate why they sometimes come to the conclusions they reach. Not disembodied sages, Supreme Court justices are human, sometimes very human.


In similar testimony before a previous congressional committee, Kennedy has more than implied that if Congress were to insist that the oral arguments be open to us all, that disrespect for the Justices' "presumption of correctness" would violate the Constitution's separation of powers!


Where did he find that in the Constitution?


Having read Madison's notes of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and copious analyses of that document by constitutional scholars, I haven't seen any basis that the opening of our very highest tribunal to the people it judges is a violation of Madison's assurance of our: "Right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communications among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right." He did not exclude the Supreme Court.


Kennedy himself, when he speaks at schools, warns: "We are in danger of having a generation that is simply ignorant of the principles that this country stands for and its history. You cannot preserve what you don't understand. You cannot defend what you do not know." And when I talk at middle and high schools, as well as colleges, I have often repeated Kennedy's essential warning — especially now, as we fight to protect and preserve who we are — that, "the Constitution needs renewal and understanding each generation, or else it's not going to last."


For all of us, including those who read the tabloids, seeing these nine Americans — who continually argue among themselves about what this Constitution means in multiple dimensions of our lives — in action would be a stimulus to find out more not only about that document but also the intriguing, exciting history of the Constitution.


In a lead editorial (Oct. 2, 2007), USA Today noted: "Where cameras have entered (the lower) courtrooms and legislatures, the experience has generally gone better than opponents feared, and been a boon to openness in government." The Washington Times added that "at her confirmation hearings in 1993, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that televised proceedings (of the Supreme Court) 'would be good for the public.'" Justice William Brennan told me the same thing.


At future confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees by any president, the Senate Judiciary Committee should ask each of them whether they agree with Ginsburg and Brennan — and, if not, why not? I am sure C-SPAN would run oral arguments, in full, of significant cases, and might even open an auxiliary channel for all oral arguments because some of the cases with the least obvious impact on the public end up changing many lives. Why shut us out?

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights and author of several books, including his current work, "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance". Comment by clicking here.

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