Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Judicial Branch out on a limb

Constitution Killers
The Supreme Court's judicial activists are cutting off the branch on which they sit. By rejecting the law and putting their personal opinions in its place, the justices invite the people to imitate them and disregard their decrees with the same willfulness they disregard the Constitution. If Anthony Kennedy isn't bound by the framers' words, why are the people bound by his?

The authority of Supreme Court justices derives from the authority of the Constitution: once they deny its authority, they deny their own. The Roper v. Simmons decision is a stunningly stark illustration of this despotism that masquerades as jurisprudence. Despotism is not an overwrought description here: we are dealing with a lawless court, judges who obey no law save their own will. Yes, they invoke a living Constitution, but that just means the real Constitution lies dead at their feet, having been trampled beneath a juggernaut of false progress.

The Supreme Court has been holding a de facto constitutional convention for decades, ripping up the old one and writing a new one without the consent of the people. A fitting punishment for this act of hubris will come when the chaos that their own example of lawlessness has set in motion consumes them in impeachment trials or worse.