If abolitionist Frederick Douglas appeared today in New Jersey and asked for political support from the African American community, he might be surprised at the fact that his political affiliation would far eclipse his accomplishments. Douglas was a Republican.
In April of 1865, shortly after the Civil War ended, and President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Douglas gave a speech at the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston. At issue was the voting rights of Black men and to this subject Douglas remarked:
“I have had but one idea for the last three years to present to the American people, and the phraseology in which I clothe it is the old abolition phraseology. I am for the immediate, unconditional, and universal enfranchisement of the black man, in every State in the Union. Without this, his liberty is a mockery; without this, you might as well almost retain the old name of slavery for his condition; for in fact, if he is not the slave of the individual master, he is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a privilege, not as a right. He is at the mercy of the mob, and has no means of protecting himself.”
Drawing loud applauses from the previous line, Douglas went right into the heart of his speech. He deviated from the conventional thought of most abolitionists, which at the time was that the right to vote should come last. The immediate need for African Americans, most thought, was to end slavery, organize and let voting naturally come at the end of the abolitionist movement. Douglas remarked: “It may be objected, however, that this pressing of the Negro’s right to suffrage is premature. Let us have slavery abolished, it may be said, let us have labor organized, and then, in the natural course of events, the right of suffrage will be extended to the Negro. I do not agree with this.”
Five years after his speech, the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited the States and Federal government from denying African Americans the right to vote. Thereafter, Thomas Mundy Peterson, a Republican, on March 31, 1870 cast the first vote ever by a Black man, under the just-enacted Amendment, during the Perth Amboy, New Jersey, School Board Elections.
The right to vote, not only for African Americans, but for women, was very important to Douglas. So it is with this background that I write about a very important vote to ensue. There is likely to be a committee vote this month to advance the nomination of Bruce A. Harris, Esq. to the Supreme Court of the same State where Thomas Mundy Peterson cast his historic vote.
In the case of DePascale vs. State of New Jersey just heard by the New Jersey State Supreme Court, it has been argued that a new law requiring Justices and Superior Court Judges to make larger contributions towards the cost of their healthcare insurance and pensions reduces their salary which is prohibited by the Constitution.
A section of the State Constitution reads: “The salary of Supreme Court Justices and Superior Court Judges shall not be diminished during their term of office.”
Increasing the amount these esteemed judicial officials must pay to purchase healthcare insurance and pensions does diminish their purchasing power but does not diminish their salary.
If DePascles’ argument is sustained, then it could similarly be argued in the future that anything which diminishes these officials’ purchasing power (although not affecting their salary) would be in violation of the Constitution and hence, illegal. Note this section does not bar any diminishment of salary only action by the Sate.
Thus, following DePascales’ logic, should federal, state or local governmental entities increase income or property tax rates or Social Security or Medicare deductions, it would be equally valid to argue these actions would diminish the salary of these officials since such actions would diminish their purchasing power.
In fact, if the Court finds for the plaintiff in the cited case, one might even argue that when the price of gasoline, groceries, utilities or housing increases, it “diminishes their salary” in the same way as increasing the price of purchasing their health insurance and pension did. Consequently, one would conclude they should never have to pay a higher price for anything they purchase during their term of office.
Clearly, this argument is totally fallacious, was never the intent of the drafters of the constitution or the people that voted for its adoption and should be summarily dismissed.
This morning InTheLobby calls on Governor Chris Christie to call the Democrats’ bluff regarding their resistance to his plan to remake New Jersey’s Supreme Court into judicial body that interprets the law and away from the destructive unaccountable body that has been legislating a liberal agenda from the bench over the last four decades by nominating a conservative Democrat to the bench.
Last week, after a charade of a hearing for Christie’s nominee to the Court, Phillip Kwon, Senate President Sweeney admitted that what the Democrats really want is a Court packed with Democrats.
By nominating a conservative Democrat, one who doesn’t believe in legislating from the bench, Christie would be calling the Democrats bluff, says InTheLobby.
Where would anyone find a conservative Democrat in New Jersey?
What about Marlboro Mayor Jonathan Hornik?
Hornik tells every Republican he meets that he’s really a Republican. On his facebook page, Hornik apologizes for his Democratic registration. “Democrat, but the people matter the most,” is how Hornik describes his politics.
Is Hornik qualified? That would be up to Christie’s vetters and the Judiciary Committee to decide, assuming the Judiciary Committee cares about qualifications going forward. They clearly didn’t in Kwon’s case.
From a legal career and public service perspective, Hornik’s resume is not all that different from that of Bruce Harris, the Mayor of Chatham whose Supreme Court nomination is currently pending in the Senate. Both of specialize in real estate, finance and commercial transaction.
Hornick doesn’t have Harris’s academic pedigree. Harris went to Amherst, Boston University and Yale. Hornik went to University of Delaware and Brooklyn Law. University of Delaware is good. It’s better than Rowan. Governor Christie went to University of Delaware, so that might be good for Hornik. Brooklyn Law is no Yale, but Geraldo Rivera, Percy Sutton, David Dinkins, Larry Silverman, Sheldon Silver all graduated from Brooklyn.
What do you think MMM readers? Is Jon Hornik a conservative Democrat? Would he be an activist Justice or and interpretive Justice?
Democrats in the New Jersey State Senate are upping the ante in their unprecedented exercise of legislative power over judicial appointments.
In the wake of their rejection of Phillip Kwon’s nomination to the State Supreme Court, the Democrats are now demanding that Governor Chris Christie nominate a Democrat to the Court.
“The governor may be entitled to his own nominees for cabinet posts, but we will not allow him to pack the Supreme Court,” Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester) said. “The governor must work with us to put together a balanced tandem of candidates for the court. The Senate will not consider anything less.”
NJ.com reports that Sweeney’s spokesman Derek Roseman said that Sweeney was telling Christie to nominate a Democrat.
During his press conference following the Senate Judiciary Committee’s rejection of Kwon, Christie revealed that he had complied with Sweeney’s demand of diversity in his appointment of Kwon, the first Korean-American ever nominated, and Bruce Harris, an Africa-American who is the first openly homosexual nominee.
Reshaping the Supreme Court into a less activist body that does not legislate from the bench was a hallmark promise of Christie’s gubernatorial campaign. During his first two years in office, Christie has been openly critical of the Court and unabashed about his commitment to change it.
The New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee rejected Phillip Kwon’s nomination to be an Associate Justice of the State Supreme Court.
The committee voted 7-6 against Governor Christie’s nominee. Democratic Senator Brian Stack of Hudson County joined five Republicans in voting for the nomination.
Michael Aron of NJTV said that this is the first time in history that the Judiciary Committee has not approved a governor’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
At issue for the Democrats voting against the nomination was Kwon’s family finances, his political affiliation and his work in the Christie administration’s Attorney General’s office.
The nomination of Chatham Mayor Bruce Harris was not heard today.
Republican members of the committee, called the Democrats’ rejection of Kwon a politically motivated “indefensible character assassination.” In a joint statement Senators Gerald Cardinale, Kevin O’Toole, Joe Kyrillos, Christopher Bateman and Michael J. Doherty said,
Today, Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee rejected an exceptionally well-qualified Supreme Court nominee for no good reason whatsoever. From the moment Mr. Kwon was nominated, the Majority engaged in a campaign of intensely personal character assassination centering around issues that were completely immaterial to his fitness to serve on the court.
The Majority’s entire line of questioning and basis for rejecting his nomination centered on events that had absolutely nothing to do with Phil Kwon.
In short, Phil Kwon was railroaded out of sheer partisan animosity toward the governor. Theirs was a rejection seeking a reason. Faced with a nominee whom there was no rational basis to reject, the Majority decided to create one based on the actions of others for which he bears no legal, ethical, or personal responsibility.
If the Majority thinks that its own political ends are what matters in this process, they are mistaken. The only thing that matters is the public’s right to Supreme Court justices that are well qualified, fair, and nominated by a Governor to whom the voters gave this awesome responsibility.
Their petty actions today are a disgrace to the legislature and the people we serve.
The New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold hearings on the nominations of Bruce Harris and Phillip Kwon for seats on the State Supreme Court this morning.
The hearings can be followed live on the Legislature’s website.
If you want to understand what rule by liberal judges looks like on the state level, you need only look at New Jersey, which is teetering on bankruptcy though it remains one of America’s wealthiest states. ~ Steven Malanga, writing in City Journal
If you want to understand how, despite being one of the wealthiest states in the country, New Jersey is teetering on the brink of fiscal disaster, read Steven Malanga’s The Court That Broke New Jersey.
If you want to know why no governor or state legislature can reduce New Jersey’s oppressive property taxes, read Steven Malanga’s The Court That Broke New Jersey.
Malanga traces the roots of New Jersey’s tyranical Supreme Court all the way back to Arthur Vanderbilt, the first Chief Justice under the 1947 state constitution. In his opinion in Winberry v. Salisbury, Vanderbilt layed the foundation for judicial tyrnany by ruling that the court, not the legislature, has the power to make rules for the state judiciary.
That ruling set New Jersey’s judiciary apart from the court systems in most other states—as well as from the federal judiciary, which ultimately derives its authority from Congress. Some critics have even argued that Winberry violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee that every state must have a republican form of government. “Under the doctrine of Winberry v. Salisbury,” wrote New Jersey lawyer Anthony Kearns in a 1955 ABA Journal article, “we can only conclude that laws of practice and procedure are exclusively in the hands of men who are not elected.”
Malanga clearly lays out how New Jersey’s Supreme Court has taken over the state’s education policy and funding with no improvement in urban education to show for the $40 billion that has been wasted as a result of the Abbott decisions. He lays out the history of how the court usurped local zoning power with the Mt. Laurel decisions and COAH. He connects the dots in explaining how those two extra-constitutional power grabs have resulted in massive wealth redistribution, with no societal benefit, and an oppressive system of goverments.
Malanga stressed the importance of Christie’s promise to reshape the court with judges who will interpret the constitution rather than relating to it as a “living document.” However, he is not optimistic because of “…a Democrat-controlled legislature that’s often happy to dodge responsibility for heavy spending by letting the court mandate it.”
Hat tip to InTheLobby for bring this important article to our attention.
“Restrictions on the exposure of the female breast are supported by the important governmental interest in safeguarding the public’s moral sensibilities,” the two-judge New Jersey Appeals Court panel.
A New Jersey Appeals Court ruled yesterday that women must keep their shirts on in public in order to safeguard the public’s moral sensibilites, according to The Star Ledger.
The plantiff, Phoenix Feeley, is appealing.
I must have been absent the day they taught moral sensibilities in Constitutional Law. I think the judges should have made up different reason: If we let Phoenix Feeley go topless, we’d have to let Snooki do it, and that would create all kinds of public safety issues.
New Jersey’s public employees pension system offends my moral sensibilities. Let’s take a poll. If the majority of the public agrees with me, let’s see the judges rule their own pensions unconstitutional.
Feeley, whose real name is Jill Coccaro, sued New York City in 2005 because she was arrested while topless in the Big Apple. New York’s top court had ruled years earlier that men and women have equal rights to bare their breasts. Feeley collected $29,000. In 2008 she came to Spring Lake and tried to score again.
“In America, the land of the free and where equality reins free, a woman can’t take off her shirt but a man can,” she said. “In another country, a woman can’t take a scarf off her face without getting stoned to death. What’s so different about the two?”
Stoning to death. That’s the difference.
Before appealing, Feeley should commission a poll to find if bare breast really do offend the public’s moral sensibilities. If not, challenge the appellate court’s ruling on the facts.
By Evans C. Anyanwu
made up different reason: If we let Phoenix Feeley go topless, we’d have to let Snooki do it, and that would create all kinds of public safety issues. 
Feeley, whose real name is Jill Coccaro, sued New York City in 2005 because she was arrested while topless in the Big Apple. New York’s top court had ruled years earlier that men and women have equal rights to bare their breasts. Feeley collected $29,000. In 2008 she came to Spring Lake and tried to score again.