James Madison on Tyranny

Practical Federalism and Judicial Overreach

In the wake of the 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which was interpreted as allowing same-sex marriage in all 50 states, many faithful citizens and conservatives shrugged their shoulders and said "Well, the Supreme Court has spoken".  But it ain't necessarily so.

I had an intense colloquy with a dear friend who was shocked when I did not blindly accept the premise of "The Supreme Court has spoken".   The Majority was comprised of two Justices who had already officiated at same-sex weddings, thus they were partial, yet they refused to recuse themselves.   It was clear that it was a results driven opinion from Ass. Justice Anthony Kennedy, which ignored both the Ninth and the Tenth Amendments.  As the Federal Government has an extremely limited purview in issuing marriage licenses, it was a usurpation of states' rights and responsibilities.  This was justified through the Supremacy Clause.  So I asked what protected class from the 1964 Civil Rights Act were the parties.  That is significant as the 14th Amendment which applies due process and equal protection clauses for the Bill of Rights to the States ought to depend on a protected class.  Of course, Justice Kennedy skirted that sensitive subject by proclaiming that there was a "Right to Dignity", whatever that jurisprudentially means.

The controversy over Kentucky County clerk Kim Davis highlighted the attempt to usurp federalism and individual liberty rights over the rule of law.  Davis refused to issue any marriage licenses from her office as she felt it violated her First Amendment Free Religious Practice rights.  Davis wanted the Commonwealth of Kentucky to pass legislation which both validated the same-sex marriages under state law and to provide a reasonable accommodation so that her name would not be included on same-sex marriage licenses.

Davis was vilified in the so-called Mainstream Media with ad hominem personal attacks. Many called  for Davis to "Do your job or resign". So much for the rule of law and protecting religious liberty.  While Ms. Davis was not the perfect poster child for traditional marriage, it is worth wondering if the mob mentality for foisting Obergefell upon everyone now vitiates the No Religious Test tenant of Article VI, paragraph 3 of the US Constitution.

This seemed like a lonely legal lurch to perch my principles.  But it was heartening to see sixty prominent legal scholars urge federal and state officeholders not to accept Obergefell v. Hodges as a binding precedent.

Here is the text of the letter:

We are scholars and informed citizens deeply concerned by the edict of the Supreme Court of the United States in Obergefell v. Hodges wherein the Court decreed, by the narrowest of margins, that every state in the country must redefine marriage to include same-sex relationships. 

The Court’s majority opinion eschewed reliance on the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution, as well as the Court’s own interpretative doctrines and precedents, and supplied no compelling reasoning to show why it is unjustified for the laws of the states to sustain marriage as it has been understood for millennia as the union of husband and wife. 

The opinion for the Court substituted for traditional—and sound—methods of constitutional interpretation a new and ill-defined jurisprudence of identity—one that abused the moral concept of human dignity.

The four dissenting justices are right to reject the majority opinion in unsparing terms.

Justice Scalia refers to it as “a naked judicial claim to legislative … power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.”

Justice Thomas says the opinion “exalts judges at the expense of the People from whom they derive their authority” as it perverts the meaning of liberty into an entitlement to government action. 

Justice Alito calls attention to the well-established doctrine that the “liberty” guaranteed by the due process clause protects only those rights “that are deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,” and that it is “beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not among those rights.” He further points to the opinion’s tendency to reduce the purpose of marriage to “the happiness of persons who choose to marry.” He warns it will be used to “vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy” and is yet another example of the “Court’s abuse of its authority.”

Chief Justice Roberts says “the Constitution leaves no doubt” that the majority’s “pretentious” opinion is incorrect. It even attempts to “sully those on the other side of the debate” in an “entirely gratuitous” manner. 

If Obergefell is accepted as binding law, the consequences will be grave. Of the results that can be predicted with confidence, four stand out:

First, society will be harmed by being denied the right to hold out as normative, and particularly desirable, the only type of human relationship that every society must cultivate for its perpetuation. This compelling interest is strengthened by the fact that there is strong evidence to support what common sense suggests, namely, that children fare best when raised by their married mother and father who are both responsible for bringing them into the world and who provide maternal and paternal influences and care.

Second, individuals and organizations holding to the historic and natural understanding of marriage as a conjugal union—the covenantal partnership of one man and one woman—will be vilified, legally targeted, and denied constitutional rights in order to pressure them to conform to the new orthodoxy.

Third, the new jurisprudence of dignity is unlimited in principle and will encourage additional claims to redefine marriage and other long-established institutions.
Fourth, the right of all Americans to engage in democratic deliberation, and ultimately self-government, will be decisively undermined.

Any decision that brings about such evils would be questionable. One lacking anything remotely resembling a warrant in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution must be judged anti-constitutional and illegitimate. Obergefell should be declared to be such, and treated as such, by the other branches of government and by citizens of the United States.

In 1788, James Madison wrote, “The several departments being perfectly co-ordinate by the terms of their common commission, neither of them, it is evident, can pretend to an exclusive or superior right of settling the boundaries between their respective powers.”

In 1857, Abraham Lincoln said, “Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedents, according to circumstances. That this should be so, accords both with common sense, and the customary understanding of the legal profession.” If a 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 re-affirmed through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, to not acquiesce in it as a precedent.” If, however, a decision is “wanting in all these claims to the public confidence,” it is “not factious” to resist it.

Obergefell is wanting in all these claims to the public confidence. It cannot therefore be taken to have settled the law of the United States.

Therefore:

• We stand with James Madison and Abraham Lincoln in recognizing that the Constitution is not whatever a majority of Supreme Court justices say it is.

• We remind all officeholders in the United States that they are pledged to uphold the Constitution of the United States, not the will of five members of the Supreme Court.

We call on all federal and state officeholders:

• To refuse to accept Obergefell as binding precedent for all but the specific plaintiffs in that case.

• To recognize the authority of states to define marriage, and the right of federal and state officeholders to act in accordance with those definitions.

• To pledge full and mutual legal and political assistance to anyone who refuses to follow Obergefell for constitutionally protected reasons.

• To open forthwith a broad and honest conversation on the means by which Americans may constitutionally resist and overturn the judicial usurpations evident in Obergefell.

We emphasize that the course of action we are here advocating is neither extreme nor disrespectful of the rule of law. Lincoln regarded the claim of supremacy for the Supreme Court in matters of constitutional interpretation as incompatible with the republican principles of the Constitution. Our position is summed up in Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address:

"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."

The proper understanding and definition of marriage is self-evidently a vital question affecting the whole people. To treat as “settled” and “the law of the land” the decision of five Supreme Court justices who, by their own admission, can find no warrant for their ruling in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution, would indeed be to resign our government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. That is something that no citizen or statesman who wishes to sustain the great experiment in ordered liberty bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be willing to do.

h/t: CNS 

James Madison on Democracies

James Madison on Government

James Madison on the Constitution

A Bit of Common Core Constitutional Cut Up

Sixth Grade students in Bryant, Arkansas were given a curious assignment as part of theCommon Core curriculum.   The History class at Bryant Middle School had an assignment aimed at inspiring persuasive and engaging presentations.  All the groups of eleven year olds had to do was prioritize and revise the Bill of Rights.

 The History class work is premised on the idea that the government of the United States has determined that the Bill of Rights is outdated.  The assignment asked students to assume the persona of an excerpt on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights named to the "National Revised Bill of Rights (NRBR) Task Force, which is charged with ensuring that the "pursuit of happiness remains guarded in the 21st Century".   The substantial objective of this exercise was to excise two Amendments and add two Amendments.

This exercise was fundamentally flawed on its substance. This faux NRBR task force was supposed to protect the "pursuit of happiness".  But that phrase is in the Declaration of Independence (1776) not the Bill of Rights.

These middle school students had not been schooled on the reasons why the Bill of Rights was introduced by James Madison in 1789 and ratified in 1791.  They have no idea that the Constitution would not have been ratified by several of the States without the prospect of a Bill of Rights.   Obviously, the arguments by the Federalists and Anti-Federalists would be far beyond their ken in civics.

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The Bryant School District is proud to embrace the Common Core standards to improve students literacy and math skills. Common Core seeks to augment these skill sets through interdisciplinary learning.  Thus this History assignment was supposed to test reading, writing and language skills on informational texts.

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Unfortunately, this History exercise was premised on the Patriot Act debate, which is asking a lot of middle school students, particularly without the background knowledge of history or civics.  Moreover, the instructions of the exercise circumvents the Constitution Amendment process in trying to prune and update it.  The subject matter is so cutting edge, it is hard not to believe that the teacher will not color the debate and the student presentations. Such shaping of opinion in the guise of education shows why some conservatives are so chary about Common Core.

SEE MORE at DCBarroco.com

Reporting on Limitations on the Freedom of Speech

Last spring, eporters in Chicagoland have been informed by police that “You (sic) first amendment rights can be terminated if you create a scene…Your first amendment rights have limitations.”

The Media covering the fatal  shooting of a six year old at Mount Sinai Hospital on the west side of Chicago.  WGN-TV reporter Dan Ponce and photographer Donte Williams were taken in handcuffs when they refused to move further away from the hospital for their coverage. 

The reporters were standing on the median sidewalk  halfway across the street from  Mount Sinai Hospital as they were doing their reporting.  The officer yelled at them to move further away and the journalistics refused to comply as they did their jobs.  It should be noted that the area was not a crime scene.  The officer exclaimed:  “F*** news affairs, I don’t care about news affairs. Forget news affairs.”.

According to the police, the reporters tried to enter the hospital and were removed at the request of hospital security, but their guards declined to press charges and the individuals were released.  However, the police maintain that the reporters very presence around grieving family members created a scene.   The official police statement proclaimed: Our members were attempting to protect and respect both the grieving family members of the child, and the memory of the child herself during a very stressful time for all parties involved.

While it might be the case that the aforementioned journalists pressed the edge within the hospital in pursuit of the story (which they deny),  the offending officer's ejaculations paired with the official police statement reveal a rationale that the authorities think it is OK to limit the First Amendment when they want.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

Recently, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) proposed an amendment to the Reporter Shield bill in the Senate Judiciary committee which limits coverage to journalists whom she describes as:  “real reporters.” Feinstein was worried that protections might apply to: “people who aren’t really reporters at all, who have no professional qualifications.” Feinstein's definition of a real reporter is “a salaried agent” of a media company such as a newspaper, broadcast news station, news website or another type of news service. Of course, powers authorizing "real reporter" licensure can sway coverage.

Curious that Congress thinks that it can regulate Free Speech, especially considering that the First Amendment starts with the phrase: "Congress shall make no law…"  But considering the age when Supreme Court majority opinions on Obamacare contort arguments to make it a tax to be constitutional, maybe a clarifyng amendment could be added to impose a tax for "real reporter" licenses presumably passing SCOTUS muster.

The First Amendment is the fundamental freedom which prohibits the federal governement from encroaching on natural right to the freedom of speech.  The Freedom of Speech clause prohibits thegovernment from  banning speech because it does not agree with its message.  In Federalist Paper no. 10, James Madison pointed to the Freedom of Speech as being a vital element of a healthy Republic. 

Considering the sentiment to censor in Chicagoland and the Feinstein's "real reporter" amendment, one may question if the United States is civically healthy, much less a Republic. 

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James Madison on Conscience

James Madison on the Constitution

A South Side of Chicago Constitutional Challenge

James Madison on Liberty