How do you interpret those sections?
The reason I ask is, we would have to believe the founding fathers were blithering idiots to fight a long, terrible war, and then go through long, trying debates to establish a Constitution, only to hand over the ultimate authority over our liberty and posterity to five unelected government lawyers with life-time tenure. That would be the stupidest act imaginable.
However, that was the doctrine of an arrogant, big-government progressive named Alexander Hamilton:
"Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them." [Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78, June 14, 1788, in Bill Bailey, "The Complete Federalist Papers." The New Federalist Papers Project, p.348]
Anyone familiar with the tyrannical history of the courts would have be an absolute moron to believe the courts have been the least dangerous to liberty, as Hamilton pretends. More from Hamilton:
"The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them [the courts] to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents." [Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78, June 14, 1788, in Bill Bailey, "The Complete Federalist Papers." The New Federalist Papers Project, p.349]
I don't know anyone who believes the Supreme Court considers the Constitution to be fundamental law, or the intention of the people to be sacrosanct. Stare decisis is now the law -- the people and the Constitution be damned.
So, Hamilton's doctrine eventually prevailed, but for a while only in theory. John Marshall, who replaced John Jay as the Chief Justice, was a devout Hamiltonian who truly believed he had the final say over all the laws. However, Thomas Jefferson, state legislatures, members of congress and some presidents considered their opinions just as important as Marshall's, and they were able to suppress the usurpations until after Lincoln showed up. This is Jefferson:
"In denying the right they usurp of exclusively explaining the Constitution, I go further than you do, if I understand rightly your quotation from the Federalist, of an opinion that "the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived." If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [suicide]. For intending to establish three departments, co-ordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone, the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one too, which is unelected by, and independent of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scare-crow; that such opinions as the one you combat, sent cautiously out, as you observe also, by detachment, not belonging to the case often, but sought for out of it, as if to rally the public opinion beforehand to their views, and to indicate the line they are to walk in, have been so quietly passed over as never to have excited animadversion, even in a speech of any one of the body entrusted with impeachment. The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law. My construction of the Constitution is very different from that you quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the Constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal." [To Judge Spencer Roane. Poplar Forest, September 6, 1819., in Thomas Jefferson, "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson Vol 15." Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1903, pp.212-216]
I first became interested in the Judiciary back in the early 1990's, when I read this:
The Two Great Commandments of the Judicial System:
1) Thou shalt fill the halls to the rafters with Case Law.
2) Thou shalt build more halls.
Case Law has usurped the Constitution. It is high time it is banned and thrown into the trash heap of history where it belongs.
Mr. Kalamata
In other words you see the world the way you would like it to be, not the way it is.
Noted.