“It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions. And no one, including those judges, including the judges on the United States Supreme Court, should be surprised if one of us stands up and objects. I believe this increasing politicalization of the judicial decision-making process at the highest levels of our judiciary have bred a lack of respect for some of the people that wear the robe. And that is a national tragedy.
“I don’t know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that’s been on the news and I wonder whether there maybe some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in—engage in violence.”
– U.S. Senator and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee John Cornyn (R-Texax), speaking on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday.
Yes, folks, you read that correctly—that is a United States Senator suggesting that violence against judges is a justifiable and understandable result of “judicial activism.”
UPDATE: Or, as Matthew Yglesias puts it, “I can’t really say what game John Cornyn thinks he’s playing by speculating out loud on the floor of the U.S. Senate that maybe judges wouldn’t get killed so often by demented rapists if they were more willing to bow to conservative theories of constitutional exegesis.”