Precedent Law and the Constitution

One of my readers on Facebook believes in the power of Constitutional Law. I disagree. The following is my response to one of her assertions:

By Douglas V. Gibbs

The only way to legally change or adjust the Constitution is through amendments. Precedent Law and Implied Powers were first utilized by Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists, and later used by John Marshall in order to subvert the Constitution because they did not like the limiting principles of the document. What you are falling for is the same garbage pushed by the Federalists in order to try to turn America's government into a system similar to what we fought against with Britain. The shock troops of the Federalist Party used Hamilton's arguments for a centralized nationalist system as federally appointed judges so that they could rewrite history and the Constitution. That was the beginning of liberal judicial activism. They made sure to get those judges in place under John Adams by appointing hundreds of "midnight judges" to the federal judiciary during the final hours of his administration. With Jefferson coming into office the hope was for the judges to subvert the new administration's strict construction of the Constitution and its limited government policies.

When Jefferson canned the judges, he was accused of waging war on the judiciary, and one of those judges sued. You guessed it, the judge was Marbury. Marbury v. Madison resulted in an opinion being written that was later used as an excuse for the Supreme Court of the United States to claim it was the final arbiter of the Constitution.

Why would the Founders desire that a Constitution, and everyone's liberty, be placed in the hands of a handful of government lawyers with lifetime tenure? It is irrational to think that the central government's sole arbiter of the limits of its own powers should be its own court system. With such a system, eventually it would decide there are no limits to its powers. This is why the original intention was not to have the judiciary armed with the power of regulating the constitutional rights of all political departments, and that the only way to change the Constitution is by amendment - period.

The Constitution belongs to The People, not the judges, not the politicians, and not to Constitutional Law.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary