With the Democrats in full scream over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, it’s worthwhile to consider just why we have courts and judges.
The earliest record of judges is in the story of the Exodus. Moses, the prophet and leader of Israel, “judged between a man and his neighbor, and made known the statutes of God and His laws.” (Exod 18:16 NAS) He was overworked, since there were many disputes. At the urging of his father-in-law, Moses appointed “able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain” (Exod 18:21 NAS) as judges for these minor disputes.
These judges applied God’s laws to the disputes brought to them. This required absolute loyalty to the law and the truth (they “feared God”). They were also supposed to avoid accepting bribes. In short, they were the model of what we should expect a judge to be.
It took a long time to get from Moses to modern courts and judges. Our current system started under Henry VIII in 1178, when the king appointed five members of his household to “hear complaints and do right.” Over time, judges became more educated, and laws enacted by Parliament became a firm standard for their decisions. Even the King was bound by the law.
In the 17th century, it became clear that it was necessary to forcibly separate the functions of making law, executing law, and adjudicating disputes under the law. If the King was able to make law by decree, carry out laws he decreed, and remove judges at will, the King was the law. He could rule with a pen and a phone.
The three independent functions of government became our American separation of powers doctrine. Congress writes the laws, the President makes sure that the laws are “faithfully executed,” and the Courts apply the laws to disputes. Within that structure, we added one key element: the Constitution.
The Constitution is our highest law, and is the standard by which all other laws must be measured. A law contrary to any part of the Constitution is unconstitutional, and can properly be ignored. The question is, “By what standard do we assess constitutionality?”
The Left pushes a theory called “the living Constitution.” That is, the Constitution is subject to change as society changes, without any need for the inconvenience of going through the amendment process. As the late Justice Brennan said, judges must “give meaning” to the Constitution, implying that it has no meaning until the Court declares it. The appeal of this view is that it responds to political pressure. It turns the Courts into what the Wall Street Journal calls the Left’s “preferred legislature.”
The Right prefers an approach that is variously called “originalism” or “textualism.” That is, the Constitution is a document that had a very specific meaning when it was adopted. If we wish to apply it properly, we must understand what its text meant to the Framers. If we wish to change it, we must go through the difficult process of amending it.
That tedious process makes amending the Constitution really hard. Six amendments that were submitted to the states, including one still pending from 1789, haven’t made it. Even with a great popular push, the Equal Rights Amendment didn’t make it. This difficulty stands directly in the path to fundamentally transforming America the way the Left wants to do. So they love it when judges adopt legal theories that let them ignore the original understanding of the law. And that brings us to our next question.
What is “the Law?” Conceptually, the law is a set of principles and statutes that allow us to have an orderly society. In short, if you act in a proper manner, your actions will be lawful. But to know what is proper, you must have public standards of behavior that do not change from day to day. The easiest way for this to happen is to have recorded laws. These are specific, written documents that describe what is and is not acceptable. Short of such statutes, all of us look to what “The Average Reasonable Person” might do. Common law embodies this TARP standard, which often makes its way into written statutes.
All of us depend on the fundamental premise that law is reliably fixed. It doesn’t change when the wind blows. It isn’t necessary to bring policy preferences to the process the way a “wise Latina” might. The text of the law tells us how to (not) behave. Questions only come when the text is unclear.
Suppose that the law is whatever a particular judge decides it is. If I’m called before a racist judge because my trash talking on the basketball court offended someone, I might expect to experience harsh penalties. If the judge is a conciliator, he might take the two of us out to lunch and expect us to “get over it.” How should I know how to behave?
But if I’m taken before a judge who reads the law carefully, I’ll receive whatever treatment the law regards as just. Thus, when Congress passed mandatory sentences for crack cocaine possession that were ten times those for powder cocaine, judges who hated the law found themselves imposing the harsh sentences on lots of young black men. No “wise Latina” could get around the plain text of the statute.
The remedy for this inequity in cocaine sentencing could not properly come from the bench. Our separation of powers does not allow a judge to rewrite the law. No executive with “a pen and a phone” can do it, either. Only the legislature has the power to change laws.
How does a judge determine what a law means? The first step is to read the text. Most of the time, that’s all that’s needed. But what if the language is unclear? The President may be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Does this term of art mean that the President must have committed an indictable offense under criminal law? President Clinton perjured himself. That was indictable and impeachable. But is Tweeting personal insults impeachable? Alan Dershowitz argues that it is not. Even researching what the Framers thought leaves us with questions.
Most laws aren’t that big a problem. But administrative law-making is a real problem. Congress has become fond of passing vague laws that will say “XYZ agency shall implement this by regulation.” And XYZ agency goes to town. Since 1984 (George Orwell, can you hear us?) the Supreme Court has let them expand their powers through a doctrine called “Chevron Deference” (Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 468 U.S. 837 (1984)). The Supreme Court declared that if an agency was not unreasonable in its interpretations of a statute, its rulings should be accepted by the Courts.
As Judge Cavanaugh notes, Chevron encourages agencies “to be extremely aggressive in seeking to squeeze its policy goals into ill-fitting statutory authorizations and restraints.” “Chevron is nothing more than a judicially orchestrated shift of power from Congress to the Executive Branch.” Administrative agencies have used it to make rules that stretch the law to the breaking point. A classic is the “Waters of the USA” rule, where a farmer who cleared brush out of a ditch was fined for “destroying wetlands.” But the statute only addresses “navigable waters.” The EPA had become a super-legislature, an unaccountable fourth branch of government that cannot be found in the Constitution.
Should the farmer have expected that his fully reasonable act of maintaining his farm would be illegal? Of course not. But when the Courts accept interpretations that fall outside the text and meaning of the law as enacted, the rule of law vanishes. Policy preferences now create “law” that no one can know and punishes even the most law-abiding.
But this is exactly what the Left demands. They have been unable to get their policy preferences translated into law. So they demand that they be allowed to transform the law to match their policy preferences. Yet at the same time, they demand that a judge be bound firmly by stare decisis.
This Latin phrase means “let the decision stand.” It says that once a question has been decided by the Courts, that decision should govern how we understand the law. The Left demands that stare decisis is crucial to a judge. And why should we argue? Stare decisis creates a stable understanding of the law so an ordinary person can know how to act. But the Left only wants stare decisis in certain areas.
Roe v. Wade is sacrosanct. No judge should ever, ever, ever consider overturning it. But where in the Constitution do we find Roe’s “right to privacy?” It’s not there. And how does a “right to privacy” excuse the destruction of unborn life? Those are real questions that aren’t answered in Roe.
But what about Dred Scott, which protected slavery, or Korematsu which legalized FDR’s imprisonment of US citizens of Japanese heritage? Those decisions were stare decesis and overturned, with nary a peep from the Left. But when Janus overturned Abood, the Left went into full cry. Why? Janus took away money that unions could use to support Democrats.
Let’s put this in simple, declarative language. The Left supports a stable set of laws when it suits their policy purposes. Stare decesis is wonderful when it protects a Leftist legal standard. But when the clear text and meaning of the Constitution won’t let them do what they want, suddenly we have to have a “living Constitution.”
Americans must have a set of laws they can understand. Those laws cannot change because some bureaucrat or judge wants a different outcome. There is a prescribed way for laws to be changed. Laws must be rewritten by Congress or the Constitution amended by the States. There is no other way for ordinary citizens to be able to obey the law.
It is crucial for judges to protect the law as written. Anything else leads to the destruction of civil order and ultimately destroys America. No judges should be allowed near any court if they do not faithfully apply the text of the law to the questions before them. Fortunately, Judge Cavanaugh has shown himself to be fully committed to the law. He deserves our support.
Things may change. He may start doing some of the things I feared. He could put out a peace agreement that includes a two-state solution. He might even move forward with his (or really Chuck Schumer’s) atrocious infrastructure scheme. If those things happen, I’ll reevaluate. Until then, I support the President of the United States. Now, if we could only get Congress to do something.
