In an effort to display his outrage towards federal justices who have 'gone too far' in his opinion with their liberal agendas, the former Speaker suggested that judges be brought to Washington and, under a Gingrich Administration, testify before Congress on legal proceedings in their court.
There is no doubt that some federal justices have been known to act independently of the law - in the 9th Circuit alone, 88% of the rulings got overturned in a recent term. This statistic highlights the fundamental differences some of those justices have with the rest of America. Accountability and fair justice should be paramount in our nation's highest courts. However what Newt Gingrich has proposed would undoubtedly tilt the scale of justice away from the courts and leave the congress with more power and influence than it already has.
The furthest thing from fair and unbiased is Washington, D.C. Why then would we send our federal justices there to get caught up in a political storm of which the only way to weather is to play into it?
Assuming a President Gingrich could actually impose such a fundamentally distorted way of legal procedure, the checks and balances as we know it in the federal government would be anything but balanced. This idea of bringing justices before Congress, with the help of the Capitol Police if need be, to testify and explain their individual rulings is certainly a zany (as Mitt Romney has said) and actually redundant way to keep the courts in check.
The Framers knew full well that not every citizen would interpret the Constitution the same way. For this reason, a specific structure was put in place that allowed the people to elect representatives (who shared similar beliefs as them) to pick justices (who shared similar beliefs as them). If, for some odd reason, justices are in clear opposition of the widely accepted opinion of the public who chose them in the first place, they can be impeached quite easily.
What Gingrich is forgetting is that we already have a system that monitors the judicial branch of government - likewise, the system works because the "monitors" are also being monitored. If we fuss with this structure in any way, you elevate one branch above another and suddenly the democracy becomes some sort of oligarchy. The precedent something like this would set would be disastrous.
