more to press every country in the world to do more to stop modern slavery. the united states has shown great leadership on this issue, and i want to commend secretary clinton for the incredible leadership she has depend straighted -- demonstrated, making it a top priority for the united states nationally and internationally. secretary when secretary clinton was senator clinton she was one of our leaders in forming a policy within the u.s. commission, helsinki commission to raise the issue on trafficking in persons. as a result of the work on the u.s. commission, the leadership of our country, we were able to get the organization for security and cooperation in europe to make this a priority, to adopt policies within o.s.c. so every member state, all 56, would adopt the strategy to

first understand what's happening in their own country, to take an assessment as to where they are in trafficking. then to develop a strategy to improve their record, adopt the best practices as we know who has worked and what has not worked. and then to make progress to route out trafficking in their own country, whether they happen to be an origin country or whether they happen to be a host country or whether they happen to be a transient country in which persons are trafficked through their country. they need to adopt a strategy that will help rid us of this modern-day slavery. so i'm very proud of the role the united states has played and our government has played, that the helsinki commission has played. i just want to call this matter to the attention of my colleagues. i found that the ongoing work of the office to monitor and combat trafficking and the trafficking and persons report extremely useful in engaging the 55 participating states of the

o.s.c. we use this document frequently when we meet with our colleagues or when they travel to the united states to meet with us to say what are you doing about this? this tells us you could do a better job in law enforcement, that you need to recognize that those who are trafficking are victims. they are not criminals. they're victims, and you need to have ways to take care of their needs. the report continues to function as a working document frequently cited to promote human rights commitments and the principles of the hell sin kip final act. some of the -- helsinki final act. besides the staggering estimates by the international labor organization that there are at least 12.3 million adults and children in forced labor, bonded labor, and commercial swal serving taoud at any -- sexual servitude at any given time. we know trafficking is connected to organized crime.

we know that. this is not isolated trafficking of people. it's also part of an organized effort, criminal erts that we need to rout out. what we sometimes tpergt is women and children who are trafficked are victims. take a woman from china, now 20 years old, her testimony in a report said she spent most of her life in small village in sezchuan province. she was thrilled when her boyfriend offered to take her to his hometown but instead took her to a village in the mongolian region and sold her to a farmer to be his wife. the farmer imprisoned her, beat her and raped her for 32 months. her family borrowed a substantial a. money to pay for her rescue but the farmer's

family forced her to leave behind her six-month-old baby. to canceling debts, she married the man who provided the loan. her husband regarded her as stained goods, and the marriage did not last. tragic scenarios like this will continue unless all countries, whether a point of origin for sex trade or transit point for slaves who criminal traffickers are undetected by law enforcement, or a destination for forced child labor, together to increase prosecution for these crimes. in concert with the immense awareness in the traffic report, traffic mechanism throughout the o.s.c. region resulted in a steady increase in a number of countries which enacted antitrafficking legislation. that's a success story. we've made progress. tougher laws are being adopted, and probably even more important than that we're developing attitudes in countries that this

cannot continue, that it's not something that you can just overlook. i must tell you, this report that was issued, these reports, now almost ten years, have played a critical role. the united states should be proud of what we've been able to do to call world attention to this issue. according to the state department's report, a young woman from azerbaijan had a sister who had been tricked into unregistered marriage to a trafficker who later abandoned her when she got pregnant. when the woman confronted her sister's trafficker, she became a victim. she ended up in turkey where she and other girls were tortured and forced to engage in prostitution. she escaped with the help of police who arrested the nine men who trafficked the woman and her sister. they found help from local n.g.o.'s and now she works and lives her life as a free woman. so there are some -- some of

these tragedies, we've seen heroic actions take place, some encouragements that we are making the progress we'd like to see. prostitution is not the only form of involuntary servitude outlined in this report. it contains true stories like a family in india that were bonded laborers until freed with the help of n.g.o. young boys abducted from their school by militia groups and tortured until they submitted to serving as soldiers. an eight-year-old girl given away as an unpaid domestic servant after her mother and brother died. these are real people. these are real stories. the u.s. is not immune from the problems of modern-day slavery. the 2009 trafficking in persons report highlights young girls brought to california from egypt by a wealthy couple who forced

her to work up to 20 hours a day for just $45 a month. earlier in june more than a dozen filipinos were rescued from hotels in douglas and caspar, wyoming, where they were working with minimal pay and forced to live in horrendous conditions. their employment agency allowed their work visas to expire so they would be trapped into servitude as illegal aliens. a federal grand skwreurp brought forward a 45-count indictment on racketeering. forced labor trafficking, identity theft, extortion, money laundering and related violations in wyoming and 13 other states. this is what's involved here. these are criminal elements. fortunately we're starting to see prosecution of people involved in these activities. we want to end this modern-day slavery. as human beings, we need to end this slavery in the united states and around the world.

involuntary domestic servitude and forced labor should not be accepted in any 21st century civilization. the o.s.c. has a unique role in generating instruments that empower governments to end human trafficking. each year the osce special representative and coordinator for combatting trafficking in human beings prepares a report that outlines the trends and developments of countertrafficking efforts in the o.s.c. region. this is a document that shows best practices. this is a document that is now being used in many countries around the world to see how they can better prepare their own country, their own law enforcement personnel, so they can identify trafficking and help in prosecution and prepare the right types of cases so those who are involved as criminals are held accountable. the efforts demonstrate a close partnership with the office to monitor and combat trafficking. i truly hope that this

relationship between osce and the united states state department will continue and continue to grow stronger and stronger with a common purpose. we're working together. we were instrumental in getting osce to have the capacity to do this, and the congress was instrumental in getting the state department to make these annual reports. now we have the documents. now we have the evidence. we know that progress can be made. we've seen progress made. but until we rid civilization of modern-day slavery, we have not accomplished our goal. let us take these reports, use these reports so that we can bring to an end those who have been victimized through traffickers. with that, madam president, i would yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. a senator: i would ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. a senatormr. sessions: the nomif a new justice to the supreme court of the united states brings to our minds a core question both for the senate and the american people, than is what is the proper role of a federal judge in our republic? answering this question is not simply an academic task. it's fundamental to what we will be doing here. how the american people and their representatives and their senators, the ones who have been

delegated that responsibility, answer this question impacts not only the future of our judiciary, but i think future of our legal system and the american experience, really. i would just say that from traveling the world as part of the armed services committee, i'm more convinced than ever before that the glory of our american experience, our liberty and our prosperity is based on the fact that we have a legal system you can count on. and when you go to places like afghanistan or iraq or pakistan or the west bank and -- and you see people -- bosnia, and they just can't get a legal system working. and it does not work and people are not protected in their persons from attacks and their property is not protected. contracts often aren't enforced properly, and that just demoralizes countries and it makes it very difficult for them

to progress. so i'm so proud of the american legal system. it's something that we inherited. we built upon and it is the bull work for our liberty and prosperity. so we ask this question: what do judges do? do they faithfully interpret the text of our laws and constitution as written? or do they have the power to reinterpret those documents through the lens of their personal views, backgrounds and innocence is the judiciary to be a modest one applying the policies that others have enacted or can it, the judiciary, create new policies that are -- that a judge may desire or think is good? and when the correct answer to a legal case is difficult to ascertain, is a judge then empowered to remove his or her blindfold, that lady of justice with the blindfold on holding the scales? can they remove the blindfold and allow their personal

feelings or -- or other outside the normal judicial evidence factors to sway the ultimate decision in the case? so i'm going to be talking about that and addressing those questions in the weeks to come. but i do think we need to first begin at the source. we must return to the words and ideas of those who founded our nation, whose foresight resulted in the greatest republic this world has ever known and the greatest legal system anywhere in the world. so it's clear from reviewing these words and ideas and ideals, particularly as expressed in the constitution itself, that our founders desired and created a court system that was independent, impartial, restrained, and that through a faithful rendering of the constitution serves as a check against the intrusion of

government on the rights of human kind. the founders established a government that was modest in scope and limited in its authority. nor to -- they bounded the government by a written constitution. its powers were only those expressly granted to the government. as chief justice john marshall famously wrote -- quote -- "this government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers." enumerated means the government has the powers itself given and only those powers it was given. and if you'll recall the constitution starts out "we the people of the united states of america in order to establish a more perfect union." to the speeple established it and they granted certain powers to the -- the people established it and they granted certain powers to the government.

they were limited and enumerated and set forth. but our founders knew these limitations, history being what it is, standing alone were not enough. so they created three distinct branches of government creating a system of checks and balances to prevent any one branch from consolidating too much power. the constitution gives each branch its own responsibility. article 1 of the constitution declares -- quote -- "all legislative powers -- that's us -- herein granted shall be vested in a congress of the united states." close quote. article 2 declares -- quote -- "the executive power shall be vested in a president of the united states." close quote. an article 3 declares -- quote -- "the judicial power of the united states shall be vested in

one supreme court." close quote. and such other courts as the congress creates. so these words, i think, are unambiguous. the judiciary possesses no power to make law or even enforce law. in federalist number 47, one of our founding fathers, james madison, cites the constitution of massachusetts which states -- quote -- "the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers or either of them to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men." close quote. so madison in arguing for the constitution trying to convince the americans to vote for it, quoted the massachusetts constitution this provision in it with approval stating that's essentially what we have