A look at HISTORY

Here is a look of just some of the statements and events that have helped shaped us as a country throughout our history, and I continue to ring this bell for you to pay attention to your surroundings because the government is attempting to take your life hostage.

BY PRESIDENTS

Thomas Jefferson (1799)

  “Of all the doctrines, which have ever been broached by the federal government, the novel one, of the common law being in force & cognizable as an existing law in their courts, is to me the most formidable. All their other assumptions of un-given powers have been in the detail. The bank law, the treaty doctrine, the sedition act, alien act . . . &c., &c., have been solitary, unconsequential [sic], timid things, in comparison with the audacious, barefaced and sweeping pretension to a system of law for the U S, without the adoption of their legislature, and so infinitely beyond their power to adopt.” (SOURCE: Letter from President Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Randolph, Aug. 18, 1799, in Thomas Jefferson: Writings 1066 (Library of America 1984) (Merrill D. Peterson, ed) (P. 36). In commenting on this passage, Professor LaCroix of University of Chicago Law writes, “August 1799, Jefferson had confided his fears about the expansion of the federal government – in particular, the federal judiciary – in a letter to Edmund Randolph. Specifically, Jefferson worried that the growth of federal

courts’ jurisdiction would lead to a body of federal common law separate from state law

that would become a tool of federal oppression. Jefferson’s use of pronouns to refer to the

government – and thus to the Federalists – is particularly illuminating.” LaCroix, Alison

L., The New Wheel in the Federal Machine: From Sovereignty to Jurisdiction in the Early

Republic, (Working Paper for SUPREME COURT REVIEW) (Jan. 2008), available at

http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=1085378. )

Thomas Jefferson (1819)

“The constitution on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.” (SOURCE; Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Judge Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819. “The writings of Thomas Jefferson,” edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb, vol. 15, p. 213 (1904))

Thomas Jefferson (1820)

  “To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.” (SOURCE: Letter from Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, September 28, 1820)

Thomas Jefferson (1821)

  “The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with

noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.” (SOURCE: Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821, in the Jeffersonian Cyclopedia (Funk and Wagnall's 1900) (P. 842)) -1

Andrew Jackson (1832)

  “John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now if he can.” (SOURCE: Andrew

Jackson, as quoted by Horace Greeley, registering his disagreement with the Marshall

Supreme Court’s decision in Worcester v. Georgia (1832). Meacham, Jon., American Lion:

Andrew Jackson in the White House. (Random House 2009) (P. 204))

Andrew Jackson (1832)

  “It is maintained by the advocates of the bank that its constitutionality in all its features ought to be considered as settled by precedent and by the decision of the Supreme Court. To this conclusion I cannot assent. Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority, and should not be regarded as deciding questions of constitutional power except where the acquiescence of the people and the States can be considered as well settled. So far from this being the case on this subject, an argument against the bank might be based on precedent...

  If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the coordinate authorities of this Government. The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve.” (SOURCE: President Jackson’s Veto Message Regarding the Bank of the United States, July 10, 1832, in which he disagrees with proponents of the Bank who cite Supreme Court precedent as reason that the Bank is constitutional, from A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents Prepared under the direction of the Joint Committee on printing, of the House and Senate Pursuant to an Act of the Fifty-Second Congress of the United States. (Bureau of National Literature, Inc. (1897))

Abraham Lincoln (1857)

  If this important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of the judges, and

without any apparent partisan bias, and in accordance with legal public expectation and with the steady practice of the departments throughout our history, and had been in no part based on assumed historical facts which are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed and reaffirmed through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to acquiesce in it as a precedent. But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all these claims to the public confidence, it is not resistance, it is not factious, it is not even disrespectful, to treat it as not having yet quite established a settled doctrine for the country. But Judge Douglas considers this view awful.  (SOURCE: Lincoln speech at Springfield, IL on Dred Scott decision, June 26, 1857, in Nicolay, John and John Hay, The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume I (Lincoln Memorial University 1894) (P 315))

Abraham Lincoln (1858)

  “If I were in Congress and a vote should come up on a question whether slavery should be

prohibited in a new territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should . . .

Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is made, and we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.” (SOURCE: Lincoln speech at Chicago, IL, in response to Stephen Douglas, July 10, 1858, in Haines, Charles Grove, The American Doctrine of Judicial Supremacy (Macmillan 1914) (P. 266))

Abraham Lincoln (1858)

  “Now, as to the Dred Scott decision; for upon that [Stephen Douglas] makes his last point at me. He boldly takes ground in favor of that decision. This is one-half the onslaught, and one-third of the entire plan of the campaign. I am opposed to that decision in a certain sense, but not in the sense which he puts on it. I say that in so far as it decided in favor of Dred Scott’s master and against Dred Scott and his family, I do not propose to disturb or resist the decision. I never have proposed to do any such thing. I think, that in respect for judicial authority, my humble history would not suffer in a comparison with that of Judge Douglas. He would have the citizen conform his vote to that decision; the member of Congress, his; the President, his use of the veto power. He would make it a rule of political action for the people and all the departments of the government. I would not. By resisting it as a political rule, I disturb no right of property, create no disorder, excite no mobs.” (SOURCE: Lincoln Speech in Reply to Stephen Douglas at Springfield, July 17, 1858, in The Complete Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 (Paul McClelland Angle, ed.) (University of Chicago Press 1958) (P. 78))

Abraham Lincoln (1861)

  I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.” (SOURCE: Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1937)

  “… I described the American form of government as a three-horse team provided by the  Constitution to the American people so that their field might be plowed. The three horses are, of course, the three branches of government -the Congress, the executive, and the courts. Two of the horses, the Congress and the executive, are pulling in unison today; the third is not. Those who have intimated that the president of the United States is trying to drive that team, overlook the simple fact that the presidents, as chief executive, is himself one of the three horses. It is the American people themselves who are in the driver’s seat. It is the American people themselves who want the furrow plowed. It is the American people themselves who expect the third horse to fall in unison with the other two.

  In the last four years the sound rule of giving statutes the benefit of all reasonable doubt has been cast aside. The Court has been acting not as a judicial body, but as a policymaking body. I want as all Americans want an independent judiciary as proposed by the framers of the Constitution. That means a Supreme Court that will enforce the Constitution as written, that will refuse to amend the Constitution by the arbitrary exercise of judicial power in other words by judicial say-so. It does not mean a judiciary so independent that it can deny the existence of facts, which are universally recognized…

“During the past half-century the balance of power between the three great branches of the

federal government has been tipped out of balance by the courts in direct contradiction of the high purposes of the framers of the Constitution. It is my purpose to restore that balance. You who know me will accept my solemn assurance that in a world in which democracy is under attack, I seek to make American democracy succeed. You and I will do our part.” (SOURCE: Roosevelt’s Fireside Chat on the Reorganization of the Judiciary, March 9, 1937, available at Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/030937.html)

BY SUPREME COURT JUSTICES

Justice Stephen Johnson Field (1893)

“The independence of the states, legislative and judicial, on all matters within their cognizance is as essential to the existence and harmonious workings of our federal system as is the legislative and judicial supremacy of the federal government in all matters of national concern. Nothing can be more disturbing and irritating to the states than an attempted enforcement upon its people of a supposed unwritten law of the United States, under the designation of the general law of the country, to which they have never assented, and which has no existence except in the brain of the federal judges in their conceptions of what the law of the states should be on the subjects considered.” (SOURCE: Baltimore & O.R. Co. v. Baugh, 149 U.S. 368 (1893) (Field, dissenting) (dissenting on the grounds that the plaintiff, a locomotive fireman, should have been compensated by his employer for an accident on the job).

Justice Lewis Powell (1974)

“The separation of powers was designed to provide, not for judicial supremacy, but for checks and balances.” (SOURCE: National R.R. Passenger Corp. V. National Ass’n of R.R.

Passengers, 414 U.S. 453, 472 (1974) (Powell, dissenting) (dissenting on the grounds that the aggrieved Amtrak passengers had standing).)

Justice Antonin Scalia (1988)

“Evidently, the governing standard is to be what might be called the unfettered wisdom of a

majority of this Court, revealed to an obedient people on a case-by-case basis. This is not only not the government of laws that the Constitution established; it is not a government at all.” (SOURCE: Morrison v. Olson, 487 US 654, 712 (1988) (Scalia, dissenting) (dissenting on the grounds that the executive’s powers were usurped by the appointment of independent

counsel under the Independent Counsel Act).)

Chief Justice John Roberts (2007)

“There was a time when this Court presumed to make such binding judgments for society, under the guise of interpreting the Due Process Clause. See Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 25 S.Ct. 539, 49 L.Ed. 937 (1905). We should not seek to reclaim that ground for judicial

supremacy under the banner of the dormant Commerce Clause.” (SOURCE: United Haulers

Ass’n, Inc. v. Oneida-Herkmer, 550 U.S. 330, 347 (2007) (Roberts, for the majority) (striking

down a statute under the Commerce Clause requiring waste haulers to bring waste to

facilities owned by a state-created public benefit corporation.))

Chief Justice John Roberts (2008)

“One cannot help but think, after surveying the modest practical results of the majority’s

ambitious opinion that this decision is not really about the detainees at all, but about control of federal policy regarding enemy combatants… All that today’s opinion has done is shift

responsibility for those sensitive foreign policy and national security decisions from the elected branches to the Federal Judiciary.” (SOURCE: Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008) (Roberts, dissenting) (dissenting on the grounds that the military tribunal system for

Guantanamo detainees that the political branches constructed does adequately protect any

constitutional rights aliens captured abroad and detained as enemy combatants may

enjoy.)

Supreme Court Judge Judge Brian Lindsay
"There is no system ever devised by mankind that is guaranteed to rip husband and wife or father, mother and child apart so bitterly than our present Family Court System." Supreme Court Judge, New York, New York

Superior Court Judge Watson L. White
"There is something bad happening to our children in family courts today that is causing them more harm than drugs, more harm than crime and even more harm than child molestation." Superior Court Judge, Cobb County, Georgia



"There is no crueler tyranny than that which is exercised under color or law, and with the colors of justice." -United States v. Janotti, 673 F.2d 578, 614 (3d Cir. 1982) (Aldisert, J., dissenting) (quoting Montesquieu, Del‘Esprit des Lois (1748)

BY OTHER COMMENTATORS

William Blackstone (1765)

  “Were [the judicial power] joined with the legislative, the life, liberty, and property, of the

subject would be in the hands of arbitrary judges, whose decisions would be then regulated only by their own opinions, and not by any fundamental principles of law; which, though legislators may depart from, yet judges are bound to observe.” (SOURCE: William Blackstone, Commentaries 1:149--51, 259—60)

Robert Bork (1971)

  “If the judiciary really is supreme, able to rule when and as it sees fit, the society is not

democratic.” (SOURCE: Robert H. Bork, “Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment

Problems,” 47 IND. L.J. 1-11 (1971)) “The requirement that the Court be principled arises from the resolution of the seeming anomaly of judicial supremacy in a democratic society. . . The anomaly is dissipated, however by the model of government embodied in the structure of the Constitution, a model upon which popular consent to limited government by the Supreme Court also rests.” (SOURCE: Robert H. Bork, “Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems,” 47 IND. L.J. 1-11 (1971))

Edwin Meese (1986)

  “…I would like to consider a distinction that is essential to maintaining our limited form of

government. This is the necessary distinction between the Constitution and constitutional law. The two are not synonymous. What, then, is this distinction?

  The constitution is—to put it simply but one hopes not simplistically—the Constitution. It is a

document of our most fundamental law...The Constitution is, in brief, the instrument by which

the consent of the governed—the fundamental requirement of any legitimate government—is transformed into a government complete with the powers to act and a structure designed to make it act wisely or responsibly…

  Constitutional law, on the other hand, is that body of law that has resulted from the Supreme Court’s adjudications involving disputes over constitutional provisions or doctrines. To put it a bit more simply, constitutional law is what the Supreme Court says about the Constitution in its decisions resolving the cases and controversies that come before it.” (SOURCE: Meese speech at Tulane University, October 21, 1986, in Calabresi, Steven, Originalism: A Quarter Century of Debate (Regnery 2007) (P. 101-102))

Edwin Meese (1986)

  “Once we understand the distinction between constitutional law and the Constitution, once we see that constitutional decisions need not be seen as the last words in constitutional construction, once we comprehend that these decisions do not necessarily determine future public policy, once we see all of this, we can grasp a correlative point: constitutional interpretation is not the business of the Court only, but also properly the business of all branches of government.” (SOURCE: Meese speech at Tulane University, October 21, 1986, in Calabresi, Steven, Originalism: A Quarter Century of Debate (Regnery 2007) (P. 105))

Larry Kramer (2004)

  In 1958...all nine Justices signed an extraordinary opinion in Cooper v. Aaron insisting that

Marbury [Marbury v. Madison] had “declared the basic principle that the federal judiciary is

supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution” and that this idea “has ever since been respected by this Court and the Country as a permanent and indispensable feature of our constitutional system.” This was, of course, just bluster and puff. As we have seen, Marbury said no such thing, and judicial supremacy was not cheerfully embraced in the years after Marbury was decided. The Justices in Cooper were not reporting a fact so much as trying to manufacture one...the declaration of judicial interpretive supremacy evoked considerable skepticism at the time. But here is the striking thing: after Cooper v. Aaron, the idea of judicial supremacy seemed gradually, at long last, to find wide public acceptance. (SOURCE: Kramer, Larry. The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (Oxford University Press 2006) (P. 221)) Charles Warren “[h]owever the Court may interpret the provisions of the Constitution, it is still the Constitution which is the law and not the decisions of the Court.” (SOURCE: Legal historian Warren, as cited by Meese in speech at Tulane University, October 21, 1986, in Calabresi, Steven, Originalism: A Quarter Century of Debate (Regnery 2007) (P. 105))

BY THE AUTHORS OF THE FEDERALIST PAPERS:

Alexander Hamilton (1788)

  “Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a

government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its

functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them. The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 78: Hamilton, June 14, 1788)

Alexander Hamilton (1788)

  “This simple view of the matter suggests several important consequences. It proves

incontestably, that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power1; that it can never attack with success either of the other two; and that all-possible care is requisite to enable it to defend itself against their attacks. It equally proves, that though individual oppression may now and then proceed from the courts of justice, the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter; I mean so long as the judiciary remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the Executive. For I agree, that "there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers."1And it proves, in the last place, that as liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have every thing to fear from its union with either of the other departments; that as all the effects of such a union must ensue from a dependence of the former on the latter, notwithstanding a nominal and apparent separation; that as, from the natural feebleness of the judiciary, it is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches; and that as nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence as permanency in office, this quality may therefore be justly regarded as an indispensable ingredient in its constitution, and, in a great measure, as the citadel of the public justice and the public security.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 78: Hamilton, June 14, 1788. Footnote 1: The celebrated Montesquieu, speaking of them, says: "Of the three powers above mentioned, the judiciary is next to nothing." "Spirit of Laws." vol. i., page 186.)

Alexander Hamilton (1788)

  “Some perplexity respecting the rights of the courts to pronounce legislative acts void, because contrary to the Constitution, has arisen from an imagination that the doctrine would imply a superiority of the judiciary to the legislative power. It is urged that the authority which can declare the acts of another void, must necessarily be superior to the one whose acts may be declared void. As this doctrine is of great importance in all the American constitutions, a brief discussion of the ground on which it rests cannot be unacceptable.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 78: Hamilton, June 14, 1788)

Alexander Hamilton (1788)

  “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 78: Hamilton, June 14, 1788)

Alexander Hamilton (1788)

  “If it be said that the legislative body are themselves the constitutional judges of their own

powers, and that the construction they put upon them is conclusive upon the other departments, it may be answered, that this cannot be the natural presumption, where it is not to be collected from any particular provisions in the Constitution. It is not otherwise to be supposed, that the Constitution could intend to enable the representatives of the people to substitute their WILL to that of their constituents. It is far more rational to suppose, that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 78: Hamilton, June 14, 1788)

Alexander Hamilton (1788)

  “Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both; and that where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decisions by the fundamental laws, rather than by those which are not fundamental.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 78: Hamilton, June 14, 1788)

Alexander Hamilton (1788)

  “…the national legislature will have ample authority to make such exceptions, and to prescribe such regulations as will be calculated to obviate or remove these inconveniences.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 80: Hamilton, June 21, 1788)

Alexander Hamilton (1788)

  “In the first place, there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which DIRECTLY

empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution, or which gives them any greater latitude in this respect than may be claimed by the courts of every State. I admit, however, that the Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of the convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution; and as far as it is true, is equally applicable to most, if not to all the State governments. There can be no objection, therefore, on this account, to the federal judicature which will not lie against the local judicatures in general, and which will not serve to condemn every constitution that attempts to set bounds to legislative discretion.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 81: Hamilton, May 28, 1788)

Alexander Hamilton (1788)

  “But perhaps the force of the objection may be thought to consist in the particular organization of the Supreme Court; in its being composed of a distinct body of magistrates, instead of being one of the branches of the legislature, as in the government of Great Britain and that of the State. To insist upon this point, the authors of the objection must renounce the meaning they have labored to annex to the celebrated maxim, requiring a separation of the departments of power. It shall, nevertheless, be conceded to them, agreeably to the interpretation given to that maxim in the course of these papers, that it is not violated by vesting the ultimate power of judging in a PART of the legislative body.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 81: Hamilton, June 25, 1788)

Alexander Hamilton (1788)

  “It may in the last place be observed that the supposed danger of judiciary encroachments on the legislative authority, which has been upon many occasions reiterated, is in reality a phantom. Particular misconstructions and contraventions of the will of the legislature may now and then happen; but they can never be so extensive as to amount to an inconvenience, or in any sensible degree to affect the order of the political system. This may be inferred with certainty, from the general nature of the judicial power, from the objects to which it relates, from the manner in which it is exercised, from its comparative weakness, and from its total incapacity to support its usurpations by force. And the inference is greatly fortified by the consideration of the important constitutional check which the power of instituting impeachments in one part of the legislative body, and of determining upon them in the other, would give to that body upon the members of the judicial department. This is alone a complete security. There never can be danger that the judges, by a series of deliberate usurpations on the authority of the legislature, would hazard the united resentment of the body entrusted with it, while this body was possessed of the means of punishing their presumption, by degrading them from their stations. While this ought to remove all apprehensions on the subject, it affords, at the same time, a cogent argument for constituting the Senate a court for the trial of impeachments.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 81: Hamilton, June 25, 1788)

Alexander Hamilton (1788)

  “The arguments, or rather suggestions, upon which this charge is founded, are to this effect: "The authority of the proposed Supreme Court of the United States, which is to be a separate and independent body, will be superior to that of the legislature. The power of construing the laws according to the SPIRIT of the Constitution, will enable that court to mould them into whatever shape it may think proper; especially as its decisions will not be in any manner subject to the revision or correction of the legislative body. This is as unprecedented as it is dangerous. In Britain, the judicial power, in the last resort, resides in the House of Lords, which is a branch of the legislature; and this part of the British government has been imitated in the State constitutions in general. The Parliament of Great Britain, and the legislatures of the several States, can at any time rectify, by law, the exceptionable decisions of their respective courts. But the errors and usurpations of the Supreme Court of the United States will be uncontrollable and remediless." This, upon examination, will be found to be made up altogether of false reasoning upon misconceived fact.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 81: Hamilton, June 25, 1788)

James Madison (1788)

  “One of the principal objections inculcated by the more respectable adversaries to the

Constitution, is its supposed violation of the political maxim, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments ought to be separate and distinct.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 47: Madison, January 30, 1788)

James Madison (1788)

  “No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that on, which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 47: Madison, January 30, 1788)

James Madison (1788)

  “…the sense in which the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu. If he be not the author of this invaluable precept in the science of politics, he has the merit at least of displaying and recommending it most effectually to the attention of mankind. Let us endeavor, in the first place, to ascertain his meaning on this point.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 47: Madison, January 30, 1788)

James Madison (1788)

  “The judges can exercise no executive prerogative, though they are shoots from the executive stock; nor any legislative function, though they may be advised with by the legislative councils. The entire legislature can perform no judiciary act, though by the joint act of two of its branches the judges may be removed from their offices, and though one of its branches is possessed of the judicial power in the last resort.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 47: Madison, January 30, 1788)

James Madison (1788)

  “Again: ‘Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for THE JUDGE would then be THE LEGISLATOR. Were it joined to the executive power, THE JUDGE might behave with all the violence of AN OPPRESSOR.’” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 47: Madison, January 30, 1788)

James Madison (1788)

  “I shall undertake, in the next place, to show that unless these departments be so far connected and blended as to give to each a constitutional control over the others, the degree of separation which the maxim requires, as essential to a free government, can never in practice be duly maintained. It is agreed on all sides, that the powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments. It is equally evident, that none of them ought to possess, directly or indirectly, an overruling influence over the others, in the administration of their respective powers. It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. After discriminating, therefore, in theory, the several classes of power, as they may in their nature be legislative, executive, or judiciary, the next and most difficult task is to provide some practical security for each, against the invasion of the others. What this security ought to be, is the great problem to be solved.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 48: Madison February 1, 1788)

James Madison (1788)

  “The legislative department derives a superiority in our governments from other circumstances. Its constitutional powers being at once more extensive, and less susceptible of precise limits, it can, with the greater facility, mask, under complicated and indirect measures, the encroachments which it makes on the co-ordinate departments.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 48: Madison, February 1, 1788)

James Madison (1788)

  “We have seen that the tendency of republican governments is to an aggrandizement of the legislative at the expense of the other departments. The appeals to the people, therefore, would usually be made by the executive and judiciary departments.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 49: Madison, February 2, 1788)

James Madison (1788)

  “TO WHAT expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary

partition of power among the several departments, as laid down in the Constitution? The only

answer that can be given is, that as all these exterior provisions are found to be inadequate, the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. Without presuming to undertake a full development of this important idea, I will hazard a few general observations, which may perhaps place it in a clearer light, and enable us to form a more correct judgment of the principles and structure of the government planned by the convention.

  In order to lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government, which to a certain extent is admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department should have a will of its own; and consequently should be so constituted that the members of each should have as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 51: Madison February 6, 1788)

James Madison (1788)

  “But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same

department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary

constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 51: Madison, February 6, 1788)

James Madison (1788)

  “But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further precautions. As the weight of the legislative authority requires that it should be thus divided, the weakness of the executive may require, on the other hand, that it should be fortified. An absolute negative on the legislature appears, at first view, to be the natural defense with which the executive magistrate should be armed. But perhaps it would be neither altogether safe nor alone sufficient. On ordinary occasions it might not be exerted with the requisite firmness, and on extraordinary occasions it might be perfidiously abused. May not this defect of an absolute negative be supplied by some qualified connection between this weaker department and the weaker branch of the stronger department, by which the latter may be led to support the constitutional rights of the former, without being too much detached from the rights of its own department?” (SOURCE: Federalist Paper No. 51: Madison, February 6, 1788)

 Cases Affecting the Definition of Marriage

  In 1996, Speaker Newt Gingrich and the House of Representatives passed the Defense of

Marriage Act (DOMA) by a vote of 342 to 67. The Senate also passed the measure by a vote of 85-14. It was subsequently signed by President Bill Clinton and enacted into law.

Given that there existed in 1996, and continues to exist, vast differences in the opinions among the people of the several States about how they wish their state to define marriage, DOMA provided a means that respected the wishes of the people in each state to determine what legal treatment to accord same sex relationships.

  The different outcomes on this issue in the various states show that the DOMA framework for handling the issue of the legal status of same sex relationships is being worked out by the people through democratic and political means, but federal judges threaten to derail this process and make the decision once and for all by themselves.

  The Constitution of the United States has absolutely nothing to say about a constitutional right to same sex marriage. Were the federal courts to recognize such a right, it would be completely without constitutional basis. It would be substituting its own political views for the political views of the people. The federal courts would be replacing the right of the people to make such decisions for themselves with the manufactured authority of the Court to rule in such a case.

  The country has been here before. In 1856, the Supreme Court thought it could settle the issue of slavery once and for all and impose a judicial solution on the country. In 1973, the issue was abortion and once again a Supreme Court thought that it could impose a judicial solution on the country once and for all. Judicial solutions don’t solve contentious social issues once and for all, especially when they are manufactured without regard to any constitutional basis. Should the Supreme Court fail to heed the disastrous lessons if its own history and attempt to impose its will on the marriage debate in this country, it will bear the burden of igniting a constitutional crisis of the first order. The political branches of the federal government, as well as the political branches of the several States, will surely not passively accept the dictates of the federal judiciary on this issue. An interventionist approach by the Court on marriage will lead to a crisis of legitimacy for the federal judiciary from which it may take generations to recover.

Federal District Court Judge Orders

the Censoring of High School Graduation Speech

  On June 1, 2011, Fred Biery, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the

Western District of Texas in San Antonio, issued an order in the case of Schultz v.

Medina Valley Independent School District (Civil Action No.. SA-11-CA-422-FB) to

stop a high school’s valedictorian from saying a prayer as part of her graduation speech.

  Biery did so in the name of the First Amendment, which is supposed to prevent

government prohibitions of the free exercise of religion and protect the freedom of

speech.

  Biery ruled in favor of two Medina Valley parents, noting that their son would “suffer

irreparable harm” if there was prayer at the ceremony.

  Biery explicitly forbade the use of particular words and phrases, including “join in

prayer,” “bow their heads,” “amen,” and “prayer.” He ordered that the “invocation” and

“benediction” be changed to “opening remarks” and “closing remarks.”

  The judge threatened dire penalties for school officials if students or teachers disobeyed

his ruling, ordering that it be “enforced by incarceration or other sanctions for contempt

of Court if not obeyed by District official (sic) and their agents.” After public outcry from

parents, students, and even Texas Senator John Cornyn, the Fifth Circuit court stepped in

to issue an emergency ruling days later that overturned Biery’s ruling.

  Judge Biery’s decision clearly is not about defending the Constitution. It is the antireligious

judicial thought police at work here in America.

  As a first step toward reining in out-of-control, anti-religious bigotry on the federal

bench, Congress can start by impeaching and removing Biery from office. And if that

fails, Congress can seek to abolish his office.

  The American people would be better without a judge whose anti-religious extremism

leads him to ban a high school valedictorian from saying even the word “prayer.”

Historical Grounds for Impeachment of Judges

  There are many people who mistakenly believe that criminal activity is the only grounds for the impeachment of judges. It is not.

  Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 81 could not be clearer. Impeachment is “the important

constitutional check” of judges who would repeatedly and deliberately usurp the authority of the legislature.

  It may in the last place be observed that the supposed danger of judiciary encroachments on the legislative authority, which has been upon many occasions reiterated, is in reality a phantom. Particular misconstructions and contraventions of the will of the legislature may now and then happen; but they can never be so extensive as to amount to an inconvenience, or in any sensible degree to affect the order of the political system. This may be inferred with certainty, from the general nature of the judicial power, from the objects to which it relates, from the manner in which it is exercised, from its comparative weakness, and from its total incapacity to support its usurpations by force. And the inference is greatly fortified by the consideration of the important constitutional check which the power of instituting impeachments in one part of the legislative body, and of determining upon them in the other, would give to that body upon the members of the judicial department. This is alone a complete security.

  There never can be danger that the judges, by a series of deliberate usurpations on the authority of the legislature, would hazard the united resentment of the body entrusted with it, while this body was possessed of the means of punishing their presumption, by degrading them from their stations. (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 81 (1788))

  In Federalist 65, Hamilton describes impeachment as a valid remedy for “injuries done

immediately to the society itself”.  The subjects of its [impeachment's] jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature, which with peculiar propriety be denominated, POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 65 (1788))

  In his magisterial Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Supreme Court

Justice Joseph Story paraphrased and summarized the work of Richard Wooddeson, a preeminent English jurist who was regularly cited by courts in the young American republic, who wrote that judges could be impeached if they “mislead their sovereign by unconstitutional opinions.” Justice Story summarizes Wooddeson:

  In examining the parliamentary history of impeachments it will be found that many offenses not easily definable by law, and many of a purely political character, have been deemed high crimes and misdemeanors worthy of this extraordinary remedy. Thus, lord chancellors and judges and other magistrates have not only been impeached for bribery, and acting grossly contrary to the duties of their office, but for misleading their sovereign by unconstitutional opinions and for attempts to subvert the fundamental laws, and introduce arbitrary power... (Joseph Story (Supreme Court Justice from 1811-1845), in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833)

  Justice Story further notes in his Commentaries that judges are subject to impeachment

for offenses that are not criminal: “The jurisdiction is to be exercised over offences, which are committed by public men in violation of their public trust and duties. Those duties are, in many cases, political; and, indeed, in other cases, to which the power of impeachment will probably be applied, they will respect functionaries of a high character, where the remedy would otherwise be wholly inadequate, and the grievance be incapable of redress. Strictly speaking, then, the power partakes of a political character, as it respects injuries to the society in its political character . . . .

  Again, there are many offences, purely political, which have been held to be within the reach of parliamentary impeachments, not one of which is in the slightest manner alluded to in our statute book. And, indeed, political offences are of so various and complex a character, so utterly incapable of being defined, or classified, that the task of positive legislation would be impracticable, if it were not almost absurd to attempt it . . . . [N]o one has as yet been bold enough to assert that the power of impeachment is limited to offences positively defined in the statute book of the Union, as impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors...” (Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833) Justice Story also described certain presumptions about the character of legislative leaders who are responsible for impeachment actions: The Constitution supposes that men may be trusted with power under reasonable guards. It presumes that the Senate and the executive will no more conspire to overthrow the government than the House of Representatives. It supposes the best pledges for fidelity to be in the character of the individuals, and in the collective wisdom of the people in the choice of agents. It does not in decency presume that the two-thirds of the Senate representing the States will corruptly unite with the executive, or abuse their power. Neither does it suppose that a majority of the House of Representatives will corruptly refuse to impeach . . ." (Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833). Another remedy to pursue is that if judges are elected, have them removed or impeached by Quo Warranto. This means that they have failed in their official, and fiduciary duty as an elected official or judge. There are certain procedures you have to follow to have them removed from office. You can even file a civil case to have them removed. Follow your state statutes for this remedy. Challenge your intellect and take a serious look, with insight now how the United States Judicial System has totally strayed. Our founders did everything to protect us from them, yet we were lazy or complacent and allowed it to happen. What are you going to do about it - yes YOU??