Jul. 01, 2015
HARRISBURG – State Rep. Tim Krieger (R-Delmont) has circulated a co-sponsorship memo requesting support for
House Resolution 420, which calls for a full examination of the role of the judiciary in the formulation of public policy:
“On June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, departed from both legal judgment and precedent and took the extraordinary step of ‘constitutionalizing’ marriage and ordering every state not only to recognize marriages lawfully entered into in other states, but also to license same-sex marriage in their own states.
“This decision overturns not only millennia of religious and social tradition, but also hundreds of years of constitutional and legal tradition. In Federalist Paper No. 78, Alexander Hamilton wisely said that the court should have neither force nor will, but only judgment. But once again, the Supreme Court has departed from the Founding Fathers’ restrained conception of the judicial role.
“President Abraham Lincoln recognized the grave danger we now face, stating in his first inaugural address that ‘the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the [g]overnment upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court…the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their [g]overnment into the hands of that eminent tribunal.’
“President Lincoln’s words are eerily reflected in the four dissenting opinions filed in the Obergefell case. The people have a right to affect change, if they so choose, through the formulation of laws by their elected representatives in the General Assembly. Anything less damages our representative form of government. We, as members of the General Assembly, have an obligation to examine the courts’ role in the lives of our people.”
In addition to serving as a member of the House Judiciary Committee since 2009, Krieger was recently selected to chair the committee’s Subcommittee on Courts. The Subcommittee on Courts is responsible for addressing merit selection proposals, the establishment of problem-solving courts (for example, drug courts or DUI courts), judiciary funding and fee proposals, legislation creating new judicial positions and other issues dealing with court policies and procedures.
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Representative Tim Krieger
57th District
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Media Contact: Ty McCauslin
717.772.9979
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