Federal Judge Says He’s Above Natural Law as He Tosses Clerk Kim Davis in Jail [terrifying quote]

PJ Media ^ | 9/3/15 | Scott Ott

[markomalley]

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She’s an elected official, and can’t be fired except by voters in her county, so a federal judge had her thrown in jail today. I expected as much. Any true civil-disobedience act must come with the willingness to bear the legal consequences of your extra-legal behavior. Davis politely thanked the judge before being carted off to the clink.

If it were me, I also would have submitted to the governing authority, but not without a resounding “SAY WHAT, YOUR HONOR?!” after he said this…

“The idea of natural law superceding [sic] this court’s authority would be a dangerous precedent indeed,” U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning told Rowan County clerk Kim Davis.

Actually, your honor, the sovereignty of natural law over man-made authority is a founding principle — a starting point of the underlying political theory — of our constitutional republic. These United States separated from the British monarchy because we were entitled to by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” and not subservient to the alleged divine right of kings, nor to an imperious Parliament.

We ordained and established a Constitution of enumerated powers, not of general legislative authority, and “We, the People” gave Congress authority to legislate only within the powers granted in the Constitution. The rest belongs to the states, to the people and, obviously, to the great lawmaker and judge of us all.

Not only does natural law supersede the court’s authority, the judge’s authority is utterly dependent upon the existence of such a law, and — whether one wishes to acknowledge it or not — upon the authority of God.

This is not to say that each individual person may decide what natural law (or God’s law) shall be for the entire republic. But it certainly does not mean that a federal judge’s authority supersedes the law of God, or “natural law.”

[blueunicorn6]

Have you noticed all the homosexual weddings?

I haven’t even heard of one outside these spectacles.

I thought there were millions of homosexuals crying in their cocoa because they couldn’t get married.

And they have to truck in homosexuals from Ohio to push this in Kentucky?

I thought there were millions of them ready to tie the shoes behind the Porsche.

[shibumi]

" After all, it is so unfair that my scale indicates I am heavier than those around me."

Never fear.

Protector of Mediocrity and Handicapper General Diana Moon Glampers is on her way with weights for your Komrades to bear, post haste.

(But not so hasty as to cause undue envy on the part of those who are slow.)

[EternalVigilance]

“[T]he Law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s actions must . . . be conformable to the Law of Nature, i.e., to the will of God. [L]aws human must be made according to the general laws of Nature, and without contradiction to any positive law of Scripture, otherwise they are ill made.”

— John Locke, Two Treatises on Government

[chajin]

Here’s a paragraph from Letter from Birmingham Jail, slightly altered to fit the present situation:

“It is true that the judge has exercised a degree of discipline in handling Ms. Davis. In this sense he has conducted himself rather “nonviolently” in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of intolerance for religion. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps the judge gas been rather nonviolent in public, as was the Supreme Court in requiring the acceptance of same-sex marriage, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of religious injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

And one more quote, unchanged: “One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

AN UNJUST LAW IS NO LAW AT ALL.

[EternalVigilance]

“This natural law, being as old as mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, from this original.”

— William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Law of England (1765)

[KC Burke]

I am not familiar with how the judge came to the contempt finding but I do agree that in our form of separation of powers the judiciary and the executive need to follow the laws as enacted only deviating for clemancy where allowed.

The legislator may rely upon natural law in designing and enacting new laws. That is where we stood at our founding.

Rather than resign, the Clerk has taken the position that “the free exercise thereof” is her reliable refuge. An admirable position. Our nation has done this mess, not one judge caught in the middle as much as the Clerk.

[TigersEye]

As to what “natural law” may or may not be — there is nothing in the law which gives any guidance.

I thought the first ten amendments did a pretty good job of that.

[EternalVigilance]

“When human laws contradict or discountenance the means, which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void.”

— Alexander Hamilton

[Big Red Badger]

A tag line here ,,

I came into this world kicking,screaming and covered in someone else’s blood,
s’pose I’ll go out the same way.

Me ,
I’ll have a beer.

[EternalVigilance]

“No human law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage ordained by God’s authority from the beginning: “Increase and multiply.” Hence we have the family, the “society” of a man’s house — a society very small, one must admit, but none the less a true society, and one older than any State. Consequently, it has rights and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State.”

— Leo XII Rerum Novarum, (12), MAY 15, 1891

[EternalVigilance]

“The instruments, by which [government] must act, are either the authority of the Laws or force. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; ... and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government, there is an end to liberty.”

—Alexander Hamilton

[Karl Spooner]

If the clerk’s name is substituted for by the deputy’s name and the willing deputy issues the license there is no need to negate the religious objection of the first clerk.

I believe that when the judge called Kim back the 2nd time he wanted to know if she would authorize the deputy clerks to issue the gay licenses. I read that she refused to appear and her lawyer said that no she would not authorize them. So it appears that any marriage certificates issued herefore will not be valid. So it is now a charade.

[Godebert]

"As to what “natural law” may or may not be — there is nothing in the law which gives any guidance.

Note the reference to Natural Law in the first sentence of our Declaration of Independence.

By invoking "The Laws of Nature and Nature's God" the 56 signers of the Declaration incorporated a legal standard of freedom into the forms of government that would follow.

President John Quincy Adams, writing in 1839, looked back at the founding period and recognized the true meaning of the Declaration's reliance on the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." He observed that the American people's "charter was the Declaration of Independence. Their rights, the natural rights of mankind. Their government, such as should be instituted by the people, under the solemn mutual pledges of perpetual union, founded on the self-evident truth's proclaimed in the Declaration."

The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law (1758)

The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God: The True Foundation of American Law

Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Volume 20 - Use of The Law of Nations by the Constitutional Convention

[Vision Thing]

[Welcome to the First Century AD.]

That was a fertile time for Christianity.

[healy61]

First he suckled at the teet of wealth and notoriety. Secondly, I hope she says, “Your Honor, is that all ya got/”

[Alberta's Child]

"America is the great Satan, the wounded snake." -- Ayatollah Khomenei (November 5, 1979)

[FlingWingFlyer]

It’s clowns like this black-robed turd that makes me have contempt for all of the so called, “courts” and the bozos who run them. They are nothing but a joke and the joke is on us.

[FlingWingFlyer]

You can bet judgey’s fag buddies are happy. He locked up another Christian.

[JusPasenThru]

I don't think men who place their penises into other men's rectums, or women who use penis-shaped devices as they service other women, are deserving of Constitutional protection.

Alexander Hamilton

[EternalVigilance]

“Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence.”

— Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833