Sen. Cardin Talks Courts, Constitution

Judicial activism is in the eye of the beholder.

That was the message from U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), who spoke to a crowd of 60 in Goucher College's intimate Alumnae and Alumni House on Monday morning as part of Constitution Day.

In a lecture to students, staff and constituents, Cardin spoke about recent Supreme Court cases and the need for the court to protect individual rights. Cardin has a unique relationship with Goucher College, having been a member of its board of trustees for 10 years before his election to the Senate.

The junior Maryland senator, who sits on the Senate's judiciary committee and recently took part in confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, cited recent decisions he believes have shown the high court to be less egalitarian in recent years.

"In some cases they legislated from the bench and they restricted individual rights. And they sided on the side of either governmental power or special interest, corporate power," he said.

Cardin, himself a lawyer, used as Exhibit A the recent decision in the Citizens United case, which loosened limits on corporate spending on political advertisements.

"You'll see the impact," he said. "You're going to be subjected in the election... to hundreds of millions of dollars in money that you're not going to know where it comes from in an effort to convince you to vote one way or the other for senators or congressmen or governors that otherwise would not have been spent."

Cardin cited other cases where the Supreme Court overturned itself in civil and criminal cases, often in close votes.

"[The founding fathers] knew that power corrupts, including governmental power," he said. "They wanted to restrict those rights. And here we have the Supreme Court, by another 5-4 decision, restricting the rights in the criminal justice system for the individual, giving government more power in the criminal justice system."

He moderated his stance with a call for the court to focus more on individual rights and a call to his conservative colleagues to calm their regular cries of "judicial activism," a term Cardin himself seemed to want to avoid.

"One could say an activist judge is a judge who rules in ways you don't agree with," he said.

Dennis Teegardin, a junior from Ocean City and president of Goucher's College Democrats, was impressed with the senator's candor and direct answer to his question about the potential for a bill to counteract the Citizens United decision to make it through the oft-gridlocked Senate before the Nov. 2 general election. That succinct answer from the Senator? "No."

"It's too partisan in Washington," Teegardin said. "Republicans need to start working with Democrats. Democrats need to start working with Republicans."

His counterpart, Pikesville senior Rudy Stoler, president of the Goucher Republican and Libertarian Club, seemed to enjoy taking part in the discussion, but was predictably less generous towards the speaker.

"I think we could have invited someone more worthwhile in discussing the Constitution. I wouldn't consider him to be an expert in the Constitution at all," he said, adding, "I'm not a Constitutional law guy, but I really don't think the Senate the past 10 years at least has stuck to any constitutional loyalty when appointing judges."