Judicial Tyranny vs. the Rule of Law

 The Framers rejected the idea that the courts should be the final arbiters of the law or the Constitution. Judicial review, as we now know it, was not granted in the Constitution. The concept was discussed, and rejected on the floor of debate.

However, it was later asserted by Chief Justice John Marshall in his judicial opinion regarding Marbury v. Madison (1803). Over time, political elites and the legal class accepted that assertion, and the judiciary gradually elevated itself above the other branches.

As a result, we have drifted into the same trap the colonists faced under the British Empire: believing that a black robe confers superior wisdom and that judges exist to define the law rather than apply it.

The Rule of Law is not merely a collection of statutes or the text of the Constitution. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, it is grounded in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The Rule of Law is a moral and legal order that pre-exists government and stands above the will of rulers, judges, or shifting public opinion.

It is a framework rooted in objective moral reality, binding on both the governed and those who govern. It is the law not invented by man but discovered by him. It is a moral order observable in human nature and the natural order of things. It is Divine Law, which is a transcendent moral authority acknowledged by the Founding Fathers as the ultimate source of rights and duties. The Rule of Law is not whatever a legislature enacts or a judge declares. It is the alignment of human law and the pre-existing moral architecture of the universe and of the Cre Himself.ator

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Judicial Tyranny vs. the Rule of Law
Ron Schwartz