CACR-12 is the much-touted “educational amendment” that is said to aggresively deal with the egregious and outrageous “Claremont decisions” by the New Hampshire state Supreme Court. It does nothing of the sort. Here’s why:
CACR 12 is fundamentally flawed, and the arguments for passing it are based upon something along the lines of “the state Supreme Court is going to give us orders if we don’t pass it!”
Why? How can the state supreme court give orders to either the people of the state or their elected representatives, when the meaning of the words in the state constitution is clearly contrary to the new meaning they have invented. This struggle against a power-hungry judiciary is as old as our country. Thomas Jefferson said “…the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature and executive also, in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch.” (From a letter to Mrs. John Adams, Nov. 1804.)
So the state Supreme Court’s invented responsibility of the state legislature will actually bind them only if both the people and the legislature allow themselves to be presided over by an emerging despotism of unelected judges. The legislature simply needs to tell the state Supreme Court that they can read the state constitution as well as—and apparently better than—the Claremont judges, and they see that the state constitution obviously does not say what the judges argue it does. If the judges don’t back off, they should be removed from the bench according to the process provided for in the state constitution, and their state pensions cancelled. Come to think of it, as I have said in the past, any state supreme court justice who ruled in favor of the Claremont outrages should be removed from the bench now anyway.
