Patrick Leahy: “it has been suggested that if a court is overturned by the Supreme Court, that people ought to start asking whether…”

“it has been suggested that if a court is overturned by the Supreme Court, that people ought to start asking whether those judges should be thrown out. And one Senator said, ``Suppose we were overturned like that, how long would we last here in the Senate?'' Well, it seems to me that the U.S. Senate voted very strongly--84 Senators voted for the so-called Communications Decency Act even though it was obviously unconstitutional. That went to the Supreme Court and was overturned. A majority of the U.S. Senators voted for the line-item veto--again, blatantly unconstitutional but popular back home. That was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Eighty-five percent of the people, according to a poll, said they wanted some form of the Brady bill. This Senate voted for that overwhelmingly, knowing that it was probably unconstitutional. That was overturned by the Supreme Court. I can think, since I have been here, of a number of times when this body went pell-mell forward on a number of bills because it was so popular to vote for them. Many times I found myself as a lone dissenter on matters that went to the U.S. Supreme Court and were then overturned as unconstitutional. The same Senators who criticize judges who from time to time have an opinion reversed by a higher court ought to be careful with respect to what they advocate. If that standard were applied to Senators should all Senators who voted for a bill that gets overturned as unconstitutional have to resign?”