Retired Supreme Court Justice warns of Dictatorship

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5255712

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Newly retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took on conservative Republican critics of the courts in a speech Thursday. She told an audience at Georgetown University that Republican proposals, and their sometimes uncivil tone, pose a danger to the independence of the judiciary, and the freedoms of all Americans.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5255712



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O’Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms.
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The nation’s founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government those rights and privileges would amount to nothing.
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death threats against judges are increasing.
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a Georgia judge was murdered in the courtroom and the family of a federal judge in Illinois murdered in the judge’s home.
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O’Connor observed that there have been a lot of suggestions lately for so-called judicial reforms, recommendations for the massive impeachment of judges, stripping the courts of jurisdiction and cutting judicial budgets to punish offending judges.
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interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish
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It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.
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