Supreme Attack
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith lead a vicious charge in going after high court justices they don’t like.
The essence of Montesquieu’s separation of powers wisdom was its ability to prevent the consolidation of absolute power.1 Judicial review in America has been a big part of it, at least since Marbury v Madison. But sometimes it’s important to step back and see what the high court is actually doing in its most notable of rulings.
Succinctly, it is striking down law.
Not suggestions, not advice…no, when the justices feel the need to take a case and adjudicate a dispute, they are ruling on the Constitutional validity of force. In some cases, it might be the difference between a crime and a sin and in others, a rejection of the use of brute power meant to coerce people into conformity for conformity’s sake.
French statesman Frederic Bastiat put it best, see if the law benefits “one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”2
In other words, the use of force in a free society is only justified as a means to repel unwanted force—whether from an invasion of home or country. This is the natural right of self-defense in our common law and embodied in the Ninth Amendment.3
The distinction is, as the lawyers like to say, probative. Look closely and you can see who’s upholding freedom and who’s attacking it—and along with it the Supreme Court. For sure, the justices don’t always get it right and they certainly didn’t this term with several opinions further eroding ballot protections.