Melvin Watt: “on a number of occasions during the 12 years that I have been in this body, I have risen on this floor to chide my…”

“on a number of occasions during the 12 years that I have been in this body, I have risen on this floor to chide my colleagues from the Committee on the Judiciary and my colleagues in the House for the arrogant and irresponsible belief that we are somehow smarter than the Founding Fathers, for the belief that process in the system and the form of government that we operate in is less important than the result that we seek on a particular issue. I think today is the ultimate irresponsible, extreme act in that direction. How arrogant and irresponsible is it to say to our American people that the United States Supreme Court will not have jurisdiction to decide the constitutionality of an issue? How extreme is that? It just blows my mind. I have trouble coming to grips with the notion that anybody could believe that this is responsible legislating, whether it is constitutional or not, that we would deprive the United States Supreme Court the authority to determine the constitutionality of an issue and disperse it to 50 different supreme courts of the States and not have one court that would be the ultimate arbiter of constitutionality. How arrogant and irresponsible can we be? That is exactly what this legislation does today. It says to the American people that the Supreme Court of the United States no longer has the authority to determine constitutional issues. How arrogant, how irresponsible can we be?”