Tuesday, August 09, 2005
With Justice For All
History for Mommies, Daddies, and other true Americans...
Ezekiel 34:16—“[Declares the Lord God,] I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy, I will feed them in justice.”
“The primitive notion that humans can make law has become ingrained in our culture.” ~Richard J. Maybury; Whatever Happened to Justice; p 115
“One terrible result of this idea that law can be made is complete instability in the law. We don’t know who is responsible for what.” Maybury; p 116
How and when did this breakdown occur? Terry Eastland (Justice Dept., January 10, 1986 Wall Street Journal) is quoted by Maybury:
“By the 1930’s, the idea of the judge as an interpreter of established law had been almost totally rejected. As a result of the work of the Legal Realists and others, a new perspective developed—that the law is not found by judges, but is made by their interpretations of constitutions and statutes.”
There is a contradiction within the quote. “Interpreter of the established law” and “law made by their interpretations of constitutions and statutes” are approached from opposite ends of the argument. The former is meant to sound good, the latter as a downfall of our justice system. But what is established law?
Hang with me while I quote yet another distinguished thinker. Justice Stephen Markman, Michigan Supreme Court, offers these ideas on the Constitution in August’s Imprimis:
1) The Constitution limits the abuse of governmental power.
2) It does not replace the representative processes of government.
In other words, public policy might run amiss (and has), by stepping on limits set by our constitution but the founding document is not a decider of good vs bad law. Justice Markman sees “we the people” as the ultimate check and balance through “democratic debate and at the ballot box, not through judicial correction.” If this sounds different it is because it is. Markman is trying to dissuade myths. I have understood the Constitution to be a check on each law for its goodness, rightness, or wisdom. Rather, it checks the powerfulness of the law in restraining our freedom, as opposed to preserving it. Furthermore, he argues the fact that the Constitution actually was written for the people, the final checking place, and NOT for lawyers and judges.
This gets us back to “the instability in the law.” Not only are we floundering as to who does get the final say…the tyrannical judges, the renegade representatives? Maybe the dictator president? OR the Leviathan mob!...the ruler of the week unabashedly makes it up as they go!
None, not one of these options sound good to me. Maybury gets to the bottom of it in his book from 1993. He attacks political law, man made law, and says it was exposed in 1946 for the barbaric system it is! He uses the Nuremberg trials where Nazi murderers used the defense of “following orders.” The prosecution proposed the existence of a higher order, a “higher duty” than anything our governments can impose on us. The judges found the defendant guilty on the grounds that obedience to the civil government "shall not free him from responsibility.” (Marbury; p 118)
Contrast this ruling with today’s “right to life” decisions. “The right to life [is not being] regarded as given, not as a gift from the Creator”, but as a gift from [legislators, judges, or even] the voters…[all of which] can change their mind.” (Marbury; p 119)
I would disagree with Judge Markman to his face. Ask Thomas Hobbes if the people should be trusted for just laws. The people never stopped voting, there is plenty of political debate, and look where we are now…on the cusp of embryonic stem cell research and cloning. There are millions of tiny lives aborted annually, and living breathing—not intelligent enough, whatever that means, ---human beings being terminated.
There is not one human to be trusted. No, not one. Not the many. None. Genesis explains why for those of you I have lost. They wrote our Constitution with that fact in mind, to inhibit all law “making”. Nobody but God is our Check and Balance, Above all, Our Lawmaker.
Amendment VI: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherin the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”
“Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.”
~Daniel Webster
“Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” ~Edmund Burke
Ezekiel 34:16—“[Declares the Lord God,] I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy, I will feed them in justice.”
“The primitive notion that humans can make law has become ingrained in our culture.” ~Richard J. Maybury; Whatever Happened to Justice; p 115
“One terrible result of this idea that law can be made is complete instability in the law. We don’t know who is responsible for what.” Maybury; p 116
How and when did this breakdown occur? Terry Eastland (Justice Dept., January 10, 1986 Wall Street Journal) is quoted by Maybury:
“By the 1930’s, the idea of the judge as an interpreter of established law had been almost totally rejected. As a result of the work of the Legal Realists and others, a new perspective developed—that the law is not found by judges, but is made by their interpretations of constitutions and statutes.”
There is a contradiction within the quote. “Interpreter of the established law” and “law made by their interpretations of constitutions and statutes” are approached from opposite ends of the argument. The former is meant to sound good, the latter as a downfall of our justice system. But what is established law?
Hang with me while I quote yet another distinguished thinker. Justice Stephen Markman, Michigan Supreme Court, offers these ideas on the Constitution in August’s Imprimis:
1) The Constitution limits the abuse of governmental power.
2) It does not replace the representative processes of government.
In other words, public policy might run amiss (and has), by stepping on limits set by our constitution but the founding document is not a decider of good vs bad law. Justice Markman sees “we the people” as the ultimate check and balance through “democratic debate and at the ballot box, not through judicial correction.” If this sounds different it is because it is. Markman is trying to dissuade myths. I have understood the Constitution to be a check on each law for its goodness, rightness, or wisdom. Rather, it checks the powerfulness of the law in restraining our freedom, as opposed to preserving it. Furthermore, he argues the fact that the Constitution actually was written for the people, the final checking place, and NOT for lawyers and judges.
This gets us back to “the instability in the law.” Not only are we floundering as to who does get the final say…the tyrannical judges, the renegade representatives? Maybe the dictator president? OR the Leviathan mob!...the ruler of the week unabashedly makes it up as they go!
None, not one of these options sound good to me. Maybury gets to the bottom of it in his book from 1993. He attacks political law, man made law, and says it was exposed in 1946 for the barbaric system it is! He uses the Nuremberg trials where Nazi murderers used the defense of “following orders.” The prosecution proposed the existence of a higher order, a “higher duty” than anything our governments can impose on us. The judges found the defendant guilty on the grounds that obedience to the civil government "shall not free him from responsibility.” (Marbury; p 118)
Contrast this ruling with today’s “right to life” decisions. “The right to life [is not being] regarded as given, not as a gift from the Creator”, but as a gift from [legislators, judges, or even] the voters…[all of which] can change their mind.” (Marbury; p 119)
I would disagree with Judge Markman to his face. Ask Thomas Hobbes if the people should be trusted for just laws. The people never stopped voting, there is plenty of political debate, and look where we are now…on the cusp of embryonic stem cell research and cloning. There are millions of tiny lives aborted annually, and living breathing—not intelligent enough, whatever that means, ---human beings being terminated.
There is not one human to be trusted. No, not one. Not the many. None. Genesis explains why for those of you I have lost. They wrote our Constitution with that fact in mind, to inhibit all law “making”. Nobody but God is our Check and Balance, Above all, Our Lawmaker.
Amendment VI: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherin the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”
“Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.”
~Daniel Webster
“Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” ~Edmund Burke
