This President is why America today is run by warmongers and traitors!

[Octafish]

4. His ''legacy'' continues, Sir, through the Federal Courts...

Reagan and the courts: A sober assessment

Michael C. Dorf
FindLaw Columnist
Special to CNN.com
Wednesday, June 9, 2004 Posted: 2:17 PM EDT (1817 GMT)

EXCERPT...

The lower federal courts: A one-sided impact

Because the Supreme Court hears very few cases, most of the decisional federal law in the United States is generated by the lower courts. Reagan's impact on the lower federal courts was more clearly one-sided than his impact on the Supreme Court.

To be sure, President Reagan made a number of truly stellar appointments to the lower federal courts -- powerful intellects such as Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. While every judge who honors his or her oath of office attempts to follow the law as he or she best understands it, these judges -- and some others -- distinguish themselves from their colleagues by ruling in no ideologically predictable pattern. Instead, they write persuasive and interesting opinions reaching an array of liberal, moderate, and conservative results.

The run of judges appointed by President Reagan, however, have followed a distressing pattern. To paint with broad strokes, where possible, they take a stingy view of the rights the law affords people.

A former law clerk to a prominent Reagan appointee to the federal appellate court once told me that his erstwhile boss said he liked to dismiss at least one case per week on jurisdictional grounds. The former clerk was not joking, and the judge's remark was consistent with his and many of his colleagues' rulings.

One might explain some of what I am calling stinginess as compassion directed elsewhere. Many petitioners in the federal courts are people who have been convicted of crimes; by denying their rights, Reagan judges may claim they are protecting the rights of crime victims.

Fair enough, but Reagan's appointees have fashioned legal doctrine and issued particular rulings that deny the rights of minorities facing race discrimination, asylum seekers, workers, the disabled, and other innocents whose losses do not translate into victories for anyone but the government.

Reagan v. Reagan's judges

Perhaps the best way to evaluate Reagan's legal legacy is by juxtaposing his own compassion with the philosophy of his appointees.

In his efforts to shrink the size of the government, President Reagan cut federal programs on which many people relied. Some of these people contacted Reagan and explained the hardships that resulted. It was reported that Reagan would sometimes try to help the individuals about whose cases he learned but that he would not revise the general policy that led to the particular hardship and to the many more hardships about which he did not have firsthand knowledge.

CONTINUED...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/09/dorf.reagan.courts/