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To: nihil who wrote (101097)	3/20/2000 4:08:00 AM
From: Gerald Walls	Respond to of 186894

Notice that the Constitution says nothing explicit about the Supreme Court being permitted to overturn laws passed by Congress (i.e. the representatives of the People). I cannot believe that the Founders thought for a moment that a court with an indefinite number of members would end up the final authority on everything. (I'll continue if you want, but I'd prefer to wrap this up. I'm sure we're pissing a lot of people off and we'll probably both end up with warnings from SI-Bob, the Webmistress, or whoever before long, or even be suspended.) I've heard this theory before, ironically enough from those that make me look like a statist. It would appear that Article III, Section 2 gives the court this power: "The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;" What else would their power extending to a case arising under the Constitution mean but that they can rule that a law violates the Constitution and is therefore unenforceable? As far as Congress being the representatives of the people, if you mean only the House then you are correct. The Senate was originally appointed by a state's governor (and approved by the upper house of the state legislature) to represent the interests of the state, not the of people. This was scrapped by the 17th Amendment, I guess to reflect that the powers and sovereignty of the individual state had eroded to the point that they were no longer worthy of separate representation. If Senators still represented states and not people then we would have far less pork barrel bribery, unfunded federal mandates, and withholding of highway funds to extort states into passing laws that the federal government doesn't have the power to require.