John Hagelin / Nat Goldhaber 2000

Rolling Cyber Debate Question for John Hagelin from October 29, 2000
From Web White & Blue (http://www.webwhiteblue.org)

Question:
What specific standards will you use in selecting Supreme Court nominees? What are the most pressing issues the Court will deal with in the next 30 years, and how will they influence your choices? Will you put a Latino on the Supreme Court?
Submitted from Jennifer from Port Arthur, Texas, via washingtonpost.com

Answer:
First, I will attempt to reverse a dangerous trend in our judicial system: the partisan politicization of the courts. Our Supreme Court justices must be beyond reproach--and well beyond petty partisan politics. But these partisan political appointees have too often put party loyalty ahead of country.

Our democracy is under siege. After more than 100 years of Republican and Democratic rule, we have evolved the least democratic democracy on Earth. At the expense of democracy, the two parties in power have ensured permanent victory for themselves by conspiring to keep other parties off the ballot, out of the debates, and out of the media. These discriminatory and antidemocratic practices violate the Helsinki Accords governing fair and open democracy--the very Helsinki Accords that WE wrote and enforce throughout the world. We send Jimmy Carter and the CIA to impose these Accords on emerging democracies. Yet we flagrantly violate these Accords every day here at home.

Yet the Supreme Court has upheld these illegal and antidemocratic practices time and again--practices that undermine and threaten the very future of our democracy. For example, the courts have eviscerated the Equal Opportunity Provision of the Communications Act of Congress, which called for equal access to our publicly owned airwaves for all legally qualified candidates. The courts have also upheld absurdly discriminatory ballot access hurdles for third party and independent candidates. They have thus acted in a consistently partisan manner, and have undermined our very democracy.

Second, I would attempt to reverse the dangerous trend of federal encroachment into individual rights and states' rights. Thomas Jefferson warned that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Our courts have been less than vigilant in preventing the federal government from reaching far beyond their Constitutional authority.

I would therefore support Supreme Court justices with the highest track record of personal integrity, upholding the Constitution, and ruling in a consistently fair and nonpartisan manner. Beyond these key qualifications, there would be no "litmus" tests, and no oaths of loyalty to the Natural Law

Party or any other party--only to the Constitution and to the nation. I would honor these qualifications above all considerations of race, ethnicity, or gender. But the Hagelin/Goldhaber Administration will be the most diverse of any administration from the standpoints of race, religion, age, and gender.The courts are the last legal resort for citizens. If the courts fail to provide justice, over time, people take to the streets. We must avoid such violent revolution by vigorously upholding justice, equity, and fairness in our court system.