DeLay's Criticism of Justice Kennedy Raises Important Questions

Tom DeLay went on the attack yesterday, criticizing Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's decisions from the bench, saying that the Justice uses the Internet to do scholarly research on legal issues and bases his decisions on international law.

While DeLay's criticisms are political and part of a huge political firefight between Democrats and Republicans, his comments do raise a couple of red flags:

• Is the Supreme Court supposed to look at international law when deciding on U.S. Constitutional issues? The supreme law of the land is the United States Constitution, not the United Nations or any international treaty that the U.S. has signed. There have been rumblings that some of the Justices were researching international treaties and basing their decisions on those treaties, and not the Constitution. That is hard to believe, but the Justices should be basing their decisions exclusively on the U.S. Constitution. There should not be an international flavor to American legal practices.

• Looking on the Internet for ironclad legal insight is a risky thing to do for a Supreme Court Justice. Anyone can change information posted on the Internet. Doesn't the high court have its own database with every legal decision ever made in it, that is constantly scrutinized by batteries of attorneys and so forth for accuracy? Justices should be looking at legal opinions there, and not at web sites that may have glaring mistakes or personal opinions mixed in there.

So DeLay's comments, while aimed at his detractors who want him out of his job in the House, did raise some good talking points. Here's the original story.