About Leaving Power Hungry Judges Unchecked

Once again, federal courts are taking the odd position that they have more authority over immigration and national defense than the President of the United States.  Further, they are giving purported refugees and potential immigrants more rights than citizens the President is trying to protect.

Daniel Horowitz is at the point where he thinks the President should put his foot down and defy such rulings.  That would surely seem draconian to many and something of a constitutional crisis. And perhaps it would be a constitutional crisis.  But unless we wish to be a Dictatorship of Black Robes instead of a constitutional republic, we are running out of viable options.

I might as well start here Wannabe’s Laws of History.  Law Number One: The power hungry will take as much power as you allow them to take.

The founding fathers knew this and wrote the Constitution in such a way as to disperse power amongst the three branches of the federal government and to enable the three branches to check the excesses of each other.  The problem is that long ago the Legislative and Executive branches became afraid to check the power of the Judiciary.  We treat our judges like High Priests.  And so when political hacks put on the HOLY Black Robes, their tyrannical hackery goes unchecked.

My correct opinion is that the Roe v Wade decision and its aftermath played an enormous role in putting us where we are today.  Leaving aside the abortion issue itself, it was an absurd decision.  To say the Constitution mandated virtual abortion on demand for all nine months of pregnancy was about as absurd as saying it mandates that 1+1=9.

That ruling struck down the abortion laws of 48 states.  (And that is another issue.  Who gave the Federal government such power over state abortion laws?  What about the 10^th Amendment?) No wonder one of the dissenters, Byron White, called it “an exercise of raw judicial power.”  Yet not one state, not one, defied this tyrannical and absurd ruling. 

And that failure sent a terrible message to the judiciary – that they could literally get away with murder.  That whenever they felt like it, they could turn this country into a Dictatorship of Black Robes regardless of the Constitution and of the consent of the governed and their elected officials.  I know some opine that judges watch the election returns and try to avoid defying too much the consent of the governed.  Recent history makes me doubt that when it comes to the current Supreme Court and many lower courts.  And time and again they have defied the consent of the governed without paying a significant price.

Thus today we have such absurdities as federal judges running immigration policy and national defense even in the face of a presidential election won in part because of promises to restrict immigration in order to protect us.

Good people can differ as to what would justify defiance of federal judges.  But the results of leaving their usurped power unchecked in the past can hardly be disputed.

History has consequences.

NOTE:

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