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2005 Ron Paul Chapter 41

Not linked on Ron Paul’s Congressional website.

Congressional Record [.PDF]

The American Justice For American Citizens Act
14 April 2005

HON. RON PAUL
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, April 14, 2005


2005 Ron Paul 41:1
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the American Justice for American Citizens Act, which exercises Congress’s Constitutional authority to regulate the federal judiciary to ensure that federal judges base their decisions solely on American Constitutional, statutory, and traditional common law. Federal judges increasing practice of “transjudicialism” makes this act necessary. Transjudicialism is a new legal theory that encourages judges to disregard American law, including the United States Constitution, and base their decisions on foreign law. For example, Supreme Court justices have used international law to justify upholding race-based college admissions, overturning all state sodomy laws, and, most recently, to usurp state authority to decide the age at which criminals becomes subject to the death penalty.

2005 Ron Paul 41:2
In an October 28, 2003 speech before the Southern Center for International Studies in Atlanta, Georgia, Justice O’Connor stated: “[i]n ruling that consensual homosexual activity in one’s home is constitutionally protected, the Supreme Court relied in part on a series of decisions from the European Court of Human Rights. I suspect that with time, we will rely increasingly on international and foreign law in resolving what now appear to be domestic issues, as we both appreciate more fully the ways in which domestic issues have an international dimension, and recognize the rich resources available to us in the decisions of foreign courts.”

2005 Ron Paul 41:3
This statement should send chills down the back of every supporter of Constitutional government. After all, the legal systems of many of the foreign countries that provide Justice O’Connor with “rich resources” for her decisions do not respect the same concepts of due process, federalism, and even the presumption of innocence that are fundamental to the American legal system. Thus, harmonizing American law with foreign law could undermine individual rights and limited, decentralized government.

2005 Ron Paul 41:4
There has also been speculation that transjudicialism could be used to conform American law to treaties, such as the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the Senate has not ratified. Mr. Speaker, some of these treaties have not been ratified because of concerns regarding their effects on traditional American legal, political, and social institutions. Judges should not be allowed to implement what could be major changes in American society, short-circuit the democratic process, and usurp the Constitutional role of the Senate to approve treaties, by using unratifed treaties as the bases of their decisions.

2005 Ron Paul 41:5
All federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, take an oath to obey and uphold the Constitution. The Constitution was ordained and ratified by the people of the United States to provide a charter of governance in accord with fixed and enduring principles, not to empower federal judges to impose the transnational legal elites’ latest theories on the American people.

2005 Ron Paul 41:6
Mr. Speaker, the drafters of the Constitution gave Congress the power to regulate the jurisdiction of federal courts precisely so we could intervene when the federal judiciary betrays its responsibility to uphold the Constitution and American law. Congress has a duty to use this power to ensure that judges base their decisions solely on American law.

2005 Ron Paul 41:7
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to do their Constitutional duty to ensure that American citizens have American justice by cosponsoring the American Justice for American Citizens Act.



















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