Constitution Killers

The American Spectator ^ | 3-3-05 | By George Neumayr

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Constitution Killers

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Published 3/3/2005 12:09:11 AM

The Supreme Court's judicial activists are cutting off the branch on which they sit. By rejecting the law and putting their personal opinions in its place, the justices invite the people to imitate them and disregard their decrees with the same willfulness they disregard the Constitution. If Anthony Kennedy isn't bound by the framers' words, why are the people bound by his? The authority of Supreme Court justices derives from the authority of the Constitution: once they deny its authority, they deny their own. The Roper v. Simmons decision is a stunningly stark illustration of this despotism that masquerades as jurisprudence. Despotism is not an overwrought description here: we are dealing with a lawless court, judges who obey no law save their own will. Yes, they invoke a living Constitution, but that just means the real Constitution lies dead at their feet, having been trampled beneath a juggernaut of false progress. The Supreme Court has been holding a de facto constitutional convention for decades, ripping up the old one and writing a new one without the consent of the people. A fitting punishment for this act of hubris will come when the chaos that their own example of lawlessness has set in motion consumes them in impeachment trials or worse. The justices conceal their despotism in rhetoric and flat-out lying. As Antonin Scalia demonstrated in his dissenting opinion, the "national consensus" that the justices cite to justify the decision doesn't exist. Kennedy and company did a shoddy job of lining up this lie, first inventing a national consensus against executing 17-year olds, then conceding that it doesn't exist by whining about America's refusal to ratify international treaties that forbid the practice. As the Supreme Court writes a new constitution, the justices are using as their co-authors foreigners not Americans. This now routine reliance on foreign fashions illustrates their alienation from and distrust of the American people. In citing the "overwhelming weight of international opinion" in the Roper decision, the justices are in effect saying to the American people: we are right, you are wrong; since you won't support our boutique views, we will look abroad for support. The justices spoke of "evolving standards of decency," which means evolving standards of indecency. And they speak about these standards as if they are just reporting their existence rather than pushing them into existence through judicial decree. The judges are not neutral reporters of fact but agents of activism, full of elitist disdain at the American people for not changing the standards themselves. "Evolving standards of decency" in the world that the justices inhabit doesn't mean children aren't killed. It just means they have a better chance of surviving if they are guilty and dangerous. The resources the elite won't spend on unborn children they will lavish upon teenage monsters. Through some perverse inversion of values -- impossible to outline scientifically given the off-the-wall willfulness of liberalism -- unborn children can be killed according to the liberal elite's most crass utilitarian calculus imaginable while a 17-year-old menace is cosseted like a baby. The same judges who infantilize teen murderers encourage parents and schools to furnish teens with condoms, and should those condoms fail parents, according to judges, should let their teens, as responsible young people with searching consciences, decide on their own whether to apply evolving standards of decency to unwanted children growing within them during visits to their local Planned Parenthood. Nor is the posture of casting teens as innocent waifs one the justices ever strike in censorship cases. Indeed, a teens-know-best attitude runs through much of the Rousseauian Enlightenment thinking of the Court. From designing their own curriculum at New Age high schools to ruminating over the contraceptive menus supplied to them by administrators, teens operate like adults in the evolved culture that the Court seeks to spread. The Court's conveniently patronizing description of 17-year-olds in the Roper decision would have been news to Americans at the time of the Constitution's ratification: for them, many of whom didn't live to be 40, 17 was practically middle age. Since the justices maintain the practice of never consulting for the meaning of the Constitution the framers who actually wrote it, they made sure not to include in Roper the number of 17-year-old murderers executed at the time of the country's founding. The Supreme Court has zero interest in the America of the founders, indeed looks longingly to the Europe that the framers left for co-authorship in forming a new Constitution to supplant the framers' one. What Anthony Kennedy calls cultural evolution looks more like regression -- a return to the tyrannies of Enlightenment Europe. George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator.

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[NCSteve]

Part of me wants to say their should be no death penalty for under-18s as long as under-21s can't drink...

This country's entire attitude toward majority (chronological, not political) and adulthood is completely out of whack. To your example I could add that in most states, the 19 year old boy who engages in consensual sex with the 15 year old girl rots in jail while the girl runs scot-free. Please don't anyone try to tell me that 15 year old girls in general are any more unaware of or unprepared for the consequences of their actions than is the 19 year old boy. We can also add the ridiculous fact that we'll send an 18 year old to fight and die in Iraq, but we won't let them have a beer when they get home.

My preference would be to adopt the Hebrew model: Majority is reached at age 13. Emancipation, however, occurs at the will of the parent. I also think that as long as lawyers have decided to nose their way into internal family matters that we should formalize emancipation. But that is another topic entirely.

As to the remainder of your response, I couldn't agree more, but I have to ask, will anything come of this? I read a lot of righteous indignation in conservative circles, but I hear no hue and cry among the general public. We know our elected officials are far too cowardly to move on their own and the populace has been generally apathetic on this kind of subject.

Right now this remains a legal abstraction to Joe Sixpack. Until an attempt is made by a mainstream outlet to couch it in terms that those who didn't pay attention in Civics class will understand, I don't see much of anything happening to change the ruling or the arrogance of the court.

[45Auto]

Yes. Civil War II has been brewing for several decades, unfortunately. This really angers me:

"Since the justices maintain the practice of never consulting for the meaning of the Constitution the framers who actually wrote it,..."

I don't want a Second Amendment case anywhere near this court.

[45Auto]

If the SCOTUS can't abide by the Constitution then on what basis do they claim to rule?

Good question. The Constitutional Separation of Powers does not grant legislative (ruling) authority to the judiciary; they have usurped the role of the legislative branch - in that they are guilty of tyranny.

[Leatherneck_MT]

I don't want a Second Amendment case anywhere near this court.

I'll go you one better

I don't want anyone ON this court that isn't forced by Law TO consult the Framers and forced by law TO render Judgements according to what the Framers Wrote.

These people are like children who need to be carefully watched and taken to the wood shed for a severe paddling when they screw up.

[45Auto]

If the Court chooses to ignore the Constitution, no else is required to pay heed to its rulings

A chilling prospect, indeed. This court has made a mockery of the Constitution; the damage could be severe. The Rule of Law works because the great majority of citizens want it to work. When the courts decide that they and only they have the authority to decide law, then respect for the law in general declines. An oligarchy of black robed vultures will not work in America for very long. How far things will go and how fast and what ramifications this will have are unknown; but the very real possibility of chaos and anarchy are not to be dismissed. I do not want a Second Amendment case anywhere near this court.

[Durus]

In a modern representative republic, law comes from the "general will"--that is from the consent of the governed. Since legislatures swear an oath to the US constitution, any legislation passed by them can be presumed per se constitutional.

That is plainly not true. No legislative body in our Constitutional Republic has unlimited powers to legislate merely because they swore an oath. Legislation can't exceed the limits of power of the legislating body or contravene the plain meaning of the constitution. The Supreme Court plays a vital role maintaining limited powers and the separation of powers. That they have simply failed shows a weakness, not in the system, but in the representatives we have chosen.

[45Auto]

we will have slipped quietly into an oligarchy

We have been in this oligarchy for some time. Its called the US Senate, a place in which once elected, its highly unlikely (except for rare instances) that a Senator can be dis-elected. This body gives the citizenry the illusion that it is still in power through the vote; but it is more true that powerful money interests keep guys like Fat Teddy in his Senate seat - forever.

The other truth is that there is no longer any real Separation of Powers (if there ever was) - the three branches act in concert - to do whatever the hell they wish - with no possible consequences. A law may be unconstitutional, null and void - but they can still lock one up and throw away the key. Tyranny has arrived in the United States. Now, what the hell are we going to do about it??

[B4Ranch]

>>Ignorance (and apathy) is killing this country.<<

Too many people feel as if they can't do anything to correct the destination we are heading for.

Being concerned isn't enough. getting out and telling your neighbors what you are seeing, getting them involved is a must.

[Aetius]

"It is obviously illegitimate for this Court, or any court, to cite public opinion or emerging public consensus as the basis for rulings, when the public has a legitimate and fully functioning mechanism (electing representatives) for expressing such opinions and forming such consensus"


I agree, and what makes it even more ridiculous is the apparently small, elite circles to which the Court looks to get this "emerging public consensus." Either that, or the importance of public opinion is limited to the cases where it might be said to reflect a left of center viewpoint. I mean, does anyone think that Souter, Stephens, Ginberg, et al, will consider the overwhelming public opposision to gay marriage/civil unions when that matter finally reaches the high court?

[hedgie]

The Court's conveniently patronizing description of 17-year-olds in the Roper decision would have been news to Americans at the time of the Constitution's ratification: for them, many of whom didn't live to be 40, 17 was practically middle age.

Alexander Hamilton published his first patriotic pamphlet, "The Farmer Refuted," in 1774 at the age of 17.

[DMZFrank]

Impeachment, nullification, interposition, and the use of Article III, Sec. 2 of the Constitution all need to be considered.

We need to hold these officials accountable through impeachment, recall, nullification, interposition and arrest where necessary.

I am so seek of this endless deference to judicial tyranny. The nebulous references to "growing national consensus" and citations of "international law" are just too much to countenance. What does it take to make 5 of these justices cognizant of the fact that their authority to preside originates in the US CONSTITUTION?

When oh when will some elected executive officer in some state or federal capacity, in fulfilling his constitutional duty to honestly interpet the constitution (federal or state) just disregard the unconstitutional rulings of any court and dare the legislature to impeach him for it? When will some legislature impeach just ONE judge for an unconstitutional ruling?

To say that the courts have the final word on the constitutionality of a law NO MATTER WHAT THEY RULE is to say that the system of checks and balances envisioned by the founders does not exist any more.

Alan Keyes gave the best summation of this issue that I've heard yet. He said that every branch of government has a duty to honestly interpret the constitution. If the president honestly feels the courts make an unconstitutional and lawless ruling, then the president should disregard that ruling and refuse to enforce the provisions that he felt were blatantly unconstitutional. If the Congress felt the president was wrong in this decision, then it was their duty to impeach him for it. If the electorate felt that the Congress was wrong for impeaching the president or the failure to impeach him, they can remove them at the next election, as well as the president for any presidential actions that they considered wrongful. Congress can and should impeach federal judges for blatently unconstitutional rulings that manufacture law.

Lest anyone consider this formula has a recipe for chaos, then I submit to you there is no chaos worse than an unchecked oligarchic Judiciary. We are not living under the rule of law when judges make law up to suit their whims has they engage in objective based adjudication.

[Happy2BMe]

* * *

"These judges who legislate instead of adjudicate, do it without being responsible to one single solitary voter for their actions. Among the signers of the Declaration of Independence was a brilliant young physician from Pennsylvania named Benjamin Rush.

* * *

The next step in denying God's sovereignty over the United States will go to these nine people . .

"The question is or at least ought to be, how can such a small, godless, minority have such influence over our courts and legislative processes?"

Answer:

U.S. Supreme Court, 2004 - The Oligarchy*

(All Your Sovereignty Are Belong To Us!)

Back Row (left to right): Ginsburg, Souter, Thomas, Breyer
Front Row (left to right): Scalia, Stevens, Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy

ol•i•gar•chy
Pronunciation: 'ä-l&-"gär-kE, 'O-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -chies
Date: 1542
1 : government by the few
2 : a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also : a group exercising such control
3 : an organization under oligarchic control

sov•er•eign•ty
Variant(s): also sov•ran•ty /-tE/
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
Etymology: Middle English soverainte, from Middle French soveraineté, from Old French, from soverain
Date: 14th century
1 obsolete : supreme excellence or an example of it
2 a : supreme power especially over a body politic b : freedom from external control : AUTONOMY c : controlling influence
3 : one that is SOVEREIGN; especially : an autonomous state

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Excellent-essay BTTT