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Re: Accountability vs. Independence in Judges
Posted By: Stephen, on host 70.179.39.156
Date: Wednesday, April 20, 2005, at 17:32:36
In Reply To: Re: Accountability vs. Independence in Judges posted by Sam on Wednesday, April 20, 2005, at 15:44:23:

> > Should an unelected judge who serves for life be allowed to levy local taxes against citizens? There is no doubt that the judge was trying to protect the rights of minorities, but how far should they be allowed to go in order to do so?
>
> How tightly can one define, in legal terms, a distinction between this particular situation and the more general "JUDGE LEVY TAX GOOD"? It seems to me that this was a situation where the judge was, in effect, ordering that the enforcement of a prior ruling.

What's important here, that I didn't mention before, is that courts are not usually tasked with enforcing their rulings. Enforcement of laws is a function of the executive branch. Courts are very weak in this sense -- the Federalist Papers more than once mention this fact -- because they are unelected, and the idea of a strong body of unelected federal officials was anathema to the founders of the Republic. This is the whole point of separation of powers.

For the record, the Supreme Court did not allow the tax to stand. Federal courts in the United States do not have the power to enact taxes under any circumstances. They can order governments to do something, and if those governments don't comply, the courts must rely on the executive branch to take appropriate action. So the result can end up being that a local jurisdiction *has* to raise taxes, but it generally is up to the jurisdiction to actually do so.

Of course, if the executive branch at the time doesn't happen to agree with the court's ruling, it can choose to simply ignore it. This sort of thing is illegal, but it's one of those weird political gray areas. It certainly does happen from time to time, though.

Stephen

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