第六篇



       Judges, Democracy, and Natural Law



(1)  Though people on both sides regret for them, these annual summer disputes over Supreme Court nominees can be valuable exercises in civic education. The Robert Borkathon of 1987 forced millions of Americans to think about the role of a constitution in a democracy: the proper way to interpret 200-year-old phrases, the conflict between majority rule and individual freedom, and so on.



(2)  This summer President Bush’s ______ of Clarence Thomas has unexpectedly plunged the nation even deeper into the pool of first principles. America finds itself debating natural law. An enthusiasm for something called “natural law” is one of the repeated themes in Thomas’ slim collection of writings and speeches. What he means by natural law and what uses he would put it to as a life-tenured` Supreme Court Justice are not clear. This justifiably alarms some people, who are worried that “natural law” could become an excuse for a conser-vative judge to impose his political agenda — just as conservatives have accused liberal judges of using “pri-vacy” to do the same thing.



(3)  In fact, though, the two questions can be separated. Is there something called natural law? And is it a le-gitimate basis for judges to overrule the wishes of the majority as expressed in laws of a less elevated sort?



(4)  At this point in American history, the answer to the first question is beyond challenge. Yes, as far as the U.S. is concerned, natural law exists. The “Laws of Nature” are right there in the first sentence of the Declara-tion of Independence. The second and most famous sentence provides a perfect definition of natural law: human beings are “endowed` by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights,” including “ Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”



(5)  Where do these rights come from? Some may have trouble with the concept of a divine creator. Others may find it overly metaphysical` to insist that every human being has these rights in a world where most people are plainly unfree to exercise them. But few can doubt that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are what a civilized society ought to strive to provide its members. As the Declaration says, that is the reason “Govern-ments are instituted.” It is “self-evident.” That’s good enough for me.



(6)  But just because rights exist, this does not mean it is the role of judges to enforce them. The ______ of ju-dicial review — the power of unelected judges to overrule the democratic branches of government — is a funny business. Judges do not have that power in other major democracies, and it is not explicitly authorized in the U.S. Constitution. It emerges, rather, from the structure of our government. As Justice John Marshall first reasoned in Marbury vs. Madison (1803): faced with a conflict between a law and a constitutional provision, judges must honor the Constitution. All government officials should do the same. The Supreme Court’s inter-pretation of the Constitution is definitive only because procedurally it comes last.



(7)  The Constitution lists certain rights, and others (such as the right to vote) are implied in the structure of government it sets up. But nothing in the constitutional structure of the government gives the Supreme Court authority to overrule the other branches on the basis of unwritten natural law. Judicial review, a bold claim at first, is now so well established that we’ve come to feel that a right doesn’t exist unless a judge can enforce it. But enforcing a right means interpreting it, and exclusive power to interpret a concept as vague as natural law should not be given to the unelected branch of government. The job of protecting our nonconstitutional rights belongs to those who most directly “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” as the Declara-tion has it: elected officials.



(8)  The Declaration speaks of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Constitution refers more lit-erally to “life, liberty, or property.” It’s an illuminating difference. Furthermore, the Constitution does not guar-antee these values in absolute terms. It protects them only from deprivation by the government itself, and even in that regard it promises only procedural fairness and equal treatment. The authors were surely wise to narrow the focus. What would be left of democracy if judges could roam the landscape striking down anything that — in their opinion — interfered with somebody’s pursuit of happiness?



(9)  All this is not to say that natural-law concepts have no role to play in constitutional interpretation. Many people, for example, find it hard to understand why freedom of speech must be extended to Nazis and others who do not believe in free speech themselves and would deny it to others if they could. The answer is that the Bill of Rights is based on the theory of natural law, not on the alternative theory of a social contract. You are ______ to these rights simply because you are a human being, not because you have agreed, literally or meta-phorically, to honor them.



(10)  Majestic phrases like “due process of law” require analysis. Even the strictest constructionists would ac-cept that the natural-law thinking of the 18th century is useful in divining the framers’ “original intent.”



(11)  Some enthusiasts see the Ninth Amendment — which provides that the list of rights in the Constitution “shall not be interpreted to deny or disparage others retained by the people” — as a direct incorporation of natural law. The fact that these enthusiasts include would-be judicial activists of both the left and the right ought to dim the enthusiasm of both groups. The point is that the people do have rights not derived from the Constitu-tion — natural rights, if you will — but judges have no special authority to enforce those rights.



(12)  Clarence Thomas may well be claiming no special authority for judges when he invokes` natural law and natural rights. In that case, there is no problem. If he has more ambitious notions, there is a serious problem. And the fact that liberal Justices may have had overreaching notions of their own in the past is mere irony.





【参考译文】

法官、民主与自然法



(1) 尽管两边人马都对每年夏天最高法院大法官提名时的争执没有好感，它其实大可以作为公民教育的宝贵教材。1987年因博卡桑被提名而引发的马拉松式争辩，迫使数百万美国人去思考宪法在民主政体中所扮演的角色：200年前写下来的条文该如何诠释，多数决定与个人自由之间的冲突又该如何调解。



(2) 今夏布什总统出人意料地提名托马斯，使全国更加深陷于基本原则的泥沼。美国突然间掀起了一股论辨自然法的风潮。托马斯其人论述不丰，可是对所谓“自然法”的热中是他书中反复出现的主题之一。到目前为止，没人知道他说的自然法到底是什么东西，以及他当上了终身职的大法官之后要怎样运用自然法。也难怪有不少人会因此而感到不安了，他们担心“自然法”会变成这位保守派法官推行他政治计划的借口——就好像保守派曾经指控自由派法官利用“隐私权”来达到同样的目的一样。



(3) 事实上，这两个问题可以分开来谈。首先，有没有自然法这回事？其次，法官能不能用自然法为充分的基础，来推翻较低位阶法律中所展现的多数人意见。



(4)从美国历史发展至此来看，第一个问题的答案是确切无疑的。是的，在美国，自然法是存在的。在独立宣言头一句中“自然的法则”一语便道尽了一切。最有名的是第二个句子为自然法写下了完美的定义：“造物主赋予人类无法剥夺的权利”，包括“生命权、自由权，以及追求幸福的权利。”



(5) 这些权利从何而来？有些人可能难以接受“神圣造物主”的观念。而且，会有一些人认为，如果说每一个人与生俱来就拥有权利，然而，世界上却有大部分的人明显地不能自由行使这些权利，那么这种说法未免也太空洞了。可是，很少有人会反对文明社会应该为它的人民设法提供生命、自由、与追求幸福的权利。如同独立宣言所称，那就是“设立政府”的原因所在。而这也是“不辩自明”的。我可以接受这种说法。



(6) 可是，权利存在，并不表示说法官就该扮演执行它的角色。司法复审的制度——非民选的法官有权否决政府民选部门（行政、立法）的决定——这是满奇怪的制度。其它主要民主国家的法官并没有这样的权利，在美国宪法中也没有明文授予法官这种权利。其实它是来自于美国的政府结构。大法官约翰" 马歇尔在《马伯里对麦迪逊案》（1803）中首度做出这样的推理：面对法律与宪法条款冲突时，法官应以宪法为重，其余所有的政府官员亦然。最高法院的释宪具有最高的权威，只因为它在程序上排在最后。



(7)宪法中列举了一些权利出来，还有一些别的权利（例如投票权）是在宪法组成的政府构造中暗示存在的。可是政府的宪法结构中并没有那一点可以赋予最高法院权利，令其仅凭不具文的自然法就足以翻推行政、立法部门的决定。司法复审在刚提出时是很大胆的主张，现在则已根深蒂固，我们甚至觉得除了法官能够执行的权利之外别无权利可言。可是执行一项权利表示执行者要诠释权利的含义。像自然法这么模糊的概念，诠释它的责任不能完全交给政府中非民选的部门——司法机关。谁来保护我们宪法中未明言的权利？根据《独立宣言》所说，应该是最直接“从被治理者手中取得权力者”，也就是民选官员。



(8)《独立宣言》说的是“生命、自由、与追求幸福”的权利。宪法则比较平实地提及“生命、自由、或财产”。这两者之间的差别颇具深意。而且，宪法中并不保障人们绝对拥有这些权利。它只是保护这些权利不受政府本身的剥夺，而且即使在这一方面也只能保障程序的公平与平等待遇。宪法起草人把范围缩小是聪明的。如果法官能够四处横行，打倒一切只要他们认为是妨碍某人追求幸福的事物，民主会变成什么面目？



(9)这样说并不表示自然法的观念在释宪工作上没有意义。例如，有许多人不了解，为什么像纳粹这一类的人，他们自己并不支持言论自由，而且还想尽办法剥夺别人的言论自由，宪法竟然也要保障他们的言论自由。这个道理在于：美国宪法修正案中保障言论等自由的人权条款是建立在自然法的理论上，而不是建立于另一种理论——社会合约上。你享有这些权利，只因为你是人，不是因为你以文字或象征方式同意要支持这些权利。



(10) 像“正当法律程序”这类庄严的词语需要在文意上加以分析。就连最坚持要狭义解释宪法的人也会同意，18世纪有关自然法的思想有助于推测立宪者的“原意”。



(11)有一些热中人士认为宪法第九修正案就是直接把自然法纳入宪法的法源。这条修正案表示，宪法中列举出来的权利“不得被诠释为除此之外人民就不拥有其它的权利，或者其它的权利就不受重视。”可是，这些热中人士当中包括了左右两派的司法活跃分子——这一点就足以让两边人马冷却一下。重点在于：人民确实拥有非来自于宪法的权利——喜欢的话你可以叫它自然权利——可是法官并没有特别的职权可以执行这些权利。



(12)托马斯提及自然法与自然权利时，可能并没有主张法官有特别的职权。如果是这样的话，一切就都没有问题。如果他的野心尚不只于此，那么问题就严重了。至于从前自由派的法官自己也可能和托马斯一样，曾经有非分的念头，这只不过是一大讽刺罢了。