AMERICA’S MULLAHS

July 10, 2006
Vox Populi
By Edward_L_Daley
MensNewsDaily.com

(excerpt)

The dominant view today among legal scholars, law professors, practicing lawyers, and judges in this country is that the Constitution is a “living, breathing” document, and that judges on the highest federal benches are charged with “reinterpreting” its text so that it will better conform to “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” such as ours.

That perspective is, in my opinion, completely asinine.

The fact is that if you believe in that sort of Constitution then you believe in no Constitution at all, because when any legal document’s text can be redefined by judges anytime they feel like doing so, the ideas expressed therein cease to have any relevance. Supreme Court justices, as well as other federal jurists, who fail to be primarily concerned with what the drafters of our Constitution originally intended, must logically be more concerned with their own opinions of how the Constitution SHOULD have been written, and if that is the case, they have no business being judges. Simply put, if your agenda is to make changes to our Constitution, then present your amendment proposals to the American people like our founding fathers intended, and stop trying to circumvent the process by legislating from the bench!

Arguing in favor of judicial activism on any high court is no different that asserting that a district court judge who presides over a landlord-tenant dispute has the right to simply disregard the original rental agreement and write a new one on the spot, the terms of which each party involved must then be legally bound to until another judge decides to change it again.

Tell me, how would you like it if a some lawyer in a black robe determined, based upon his own ideological worldview, that you as a tenant should have your rent increased by $500 each month, even though your lease specifies a set amount with no provision for any such increase? Would you just nod your head and say, “that’s the way things go, because, after all, my rental agreement is a living, breathing document, and the judge certainly knows more about what’s best for me than I do”… or is it more likely that you would turn to the judge and ask “who are YOU to change the terms of MY rental agreement?”

Activism on any court is not only dangerous due to the fact that activists aren’t concerned with the intended meaning of legal texts, it is fascistic because those who practice it from the bench feel they have a right to redefine any of the principles upon which our laws are based whenever they happen to oppose them on ideological grounds. For instance, the Constitutional right of all Americans to exercise the religion of their choice, as expressed in the First Amendment, is rooted in the principle that lawmakers have no moral authority to dictate to anyone what they should or shouldn’t believe with respect to the nature of God, or the manner in which they may worship. While that amendment specifically relates that “Congress shall make no law respecting an ESTABLISHMENT of religion,” it in no way restricts the federal (or any state) government from displaying religious words and symbols on public buildings, monuments, currency, etc., because such acts are not coercive in nature.

CLEARLY the principle that has only recently been declared by atheists to be foundational to the First Amendment, which is that the government has no right to acknowledge the existence of God or the importance of religious beliefs in the development of our laws and culture, was completely alien to the people who crafted the Bill of Rights, as even the most cursory examination of America’s historical documents and public structures will confirm. Yet in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, judges across the land continue to insist that the atheist view is correct, because they do not feel obligated to consider the original intent of the founding fathers.

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