[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4736-4737]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           REAFFIRMATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE RESOLUTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, when I was young, growing up, I 
would often ask my mother if I could go to my friend's house to play, 
and she would say no. And instinctively I would then say, well, Billy's 
mom lets him go. And my mom would then say, I know, but I am not 
Billy's mom and I don't care what Billy's mom lets Billy do.
  Well, that was an important lesson that I learned. Unfortunately, 
some of our courts have failed to learn that

[[Page 4737]]

specific lesson, and that is why I feel honored to be able to stand 
here and talk about the Reaffirmation of American Independence 
Resolution, which my good friend, the distinguished gentleman from New 
Jersey, briefly introduced in his remarks.
  This bill states that ``judicial determinations regarding the meaning 
of laws of the United States should not be based in whole or in part on 
judgments, laws or pronunciations of foreign institutions unless those 
foreign judgments, laws and pronouncements inform an understanding of 
the original meaning of the Constitution of the United States.''
  Now, why would we do this? This only sounds logical. We are doing it 
simply because one Supreme Court majority admitted that they referred 
to laws of other countries and to international authorities as 
instructive for its interpretation of our 8th amendment.
  Another case, the Court once again took into account the European 
Court of Human Rights in establishing the belief systems that they came 
up with.
  Now, you may ask, once again, so what? What does that mean?
  Justice Scalia made a good answer on what that means. ``It lends 
itself,'' as he said, ``to manipulation.'' In fact, it invites 
manipulation. If I am a judge who wants, in some way, to overturn a 
decision, I need some reason for it. I have to sound in some way like 
an attorney. I need to cite something. You can't cite something that is 
American because what I am trying to do is overturn two centuries of 
American precedent. So you find some intelligent man living in Zimbabwe 
or Poland or somewhere else in the world and cite his examples, and it 
looks very lawyerly. But it is, of itself, a manipulation.
  Precedent is extremely important in our system of justice. Having a 
standard that does not change is important for the judge so that he 
realizes the standard he used in case A and case B will always be the 
same. It is even more important for citizens, for individuals, so that 
they know whether they go before judge one or judge two it will once 
again be the same standard that will be used in that situation. When we 
break those precedents, when we allow foreign precedents to take over, 
what we are simply doing is opening up the process for arbitrary and 
capricious decisions to be made. We are not in the process of, as 
someone once said of evolving our standards of decency as a mark of the 
progress of the maturing society. Because as Justice Scalia again said, 
sometimes society does not mature; it simply rots.
  And the purpose of the Bill of Rights was to prevent change, not to 
encourage it, so that you leave people guessing as to what is 
appropriate, what is politically correct and what is indeed legal.
  Satchel Paige used to talk to young pitchers when they were trying to 
learn how to pitch and being too cute at the plate by hitting the 
corners and were walking people. And he simply said, ``throw strikes. 
Home plate don't move.''

                              {time}  1945

  If we allow the court system to base their decisions on foreign 
opinions as opposed to American precedent, then home plate moves and 
home plate moves in a way that hurts citizens of the United States.
  Now, there are some lawyers, maybe Supreme Court Justices, and others 
who would say that my comparison of my mom's reasoning to foreign law 
used in an American court would be inaccurate or oversimplistic. 
Perhaps so because, after all, they say, didn't our Founding Fathers 
look to foreign law when they were forming the Constitution? Indeed, if 
you read the Federalist Papers, you will see lots of references to the 
Swiss system and the German system. It is full of it. But the issue at 
hand is, once the Constitution is established, then our job is to try 
to understand what it meant when it was adopted, not search for some 
hook to find an alternate opinion for personal reasons or personal 
pique. Now, that is the key.
  We shouldn't care what Billy's mom or foreign courts let Billy do 
because our court is not Billy's mom.

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