This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

The headlines read that the White House would be an ideas factory under a President

Gingrich. If that isn't troubling enough, Gingrich is idea. a says Cato Institute Vice President for Legal Affairs, Roger Pillan,

Giggrich is mightily confused about the Constitution.

In his 21st century contract with America,

he has a long section, chapter 9 9 in which he goes after the judiciary. In particular, his target is judicial supremacy, which stands for the idea that the court has the final say as to what the Constitution means.

Now that's a very old notion in American constitutional thought. It's implicit in a written constitution.

It was made explicit in the Federalist Papers in great detail, and it was made explicit and secured by the Supreme Court itself

in 1803 in Marbury v Madison. So there's nothing extraordinary about the idea that the court has the final say as to what the Constitution means.

Indeed, under the separation of powers, that's one of its main functions.

That's true at that moment at which the court is deciding it, but of course people have recourse

to make changes to written constitutions.

The courts tell us what the Constitution means,

but we can decide what it actually says.

Well, if we don't like what the Constitution says, according the court and of course we can amend it

but Newt says that that's a very difficult process and he's right and he's right and he's

right also that the court doesn't always get it right. Indeed, more often

than many of us would like to believe it gets it wrong oftentimes. And so his idea is that what we can do is either ignore what the

court has said or we can call the judges in on the congressional carpet and upbraid them for their opinions.

Indeed, remember that that's what President Obama did in his State of the Union address when he chided the court for

their decision in the campaign finance case, Citizens United, as the justices sat there and in that context could say nothing.

Well, Conservatives were outraged by that, and yet here's Newt calling for the same thing in reverse.

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