Comment #: 35854
Rating:Not Rated
Comments:
Serious credientials -- as is with most of the federal judiciary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Harvie_Wilkinson_III

Comment #: 35853
Rating:Not Rated
Comments:
A true amnerican hero is revealed in the form of a conservative intellectual titan. Some excerpts:

It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart ofthe matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents ofthis country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our
constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.


This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense ofliberty that Americans farremoved from courthouses still hold dear.

****


It is in this atmosphere that we are reminded of President Eisenhower's sage
example. Putting his "personal opinions" aside, President Eisenhower honored his
“inescapable" duty to enforce the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education II to desegregate schools "with all deliberate speed.” Address by the President of the United States, Delivered from his Office at the White House 1-2 (Sept. 24, 1957);
349 U.S. 294 , 301 (1955). This great man expressed his unflagging beliefthat “[t]he very basis of our individual rights and freedoms is the certainty that the President and the Executive Branch of Government will support and [e] nsure the carrying out of the
decisions of the Federal Courts.” Id. at 3. Indeed, in our late Executive's own words, "[u]nless the President did so, anarchy would result.” Id.


Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations ofits illegitimacy, to which by dent
of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic
gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.

It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it
may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule oflaw as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.

****
Should be required reading in all schools.