Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Bopp's Litmus Test For Kentucky Judges

Yesterday AI told you about a lawsuit Jim Bopp has brought in the state of Kentucky on behalf of a supreme court candidate to overturn Kentucky's judicial conduct rules prohibiting judicial candidates from identifying their partisan affiliation and taking positions on various issues, which might come before the court. An attorney and avid reader of AI forwarded to us a story which ran in the Kentucky Post, which clearly lays out all of the questions Jim Bopp insists that a judicial candidate in Kentucky should be able to answer. Here's the list:

  • When do you believe that human life deserving of the protection of the law begins?
  • What recognition should God properly receive when displaying or discussing an accurate history of the founding principles of American law and justice?
  • Do you believe that the Kentucky Constitution provides a constitutional right to legally recognized same-sex marriages or civil unions?
  • Does the Kentucky Constitution permit the commonwealth to require that the religious, including Christian, influences on the founding documents of the United States be taught in schools?

So in a nutshell, under Jim Bopp's litmus test, a judicial candidate will have to: declare that he is pro-life on abortion (defining life as beginning at the point of conception); declare that American jurisprudence is founded upon God's law (that would be the Christian God); declare that Kentucky's Constitution permits discrimination against same-sex couples; and declare that the Kentucky Constitution mandates the teaching of Christianity in our public schools, in order to be deemed fit to serve on the bench. Hmmm. And would that not make these judges "activist" judges?

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