On Saturday, August 8, 2015, Calvary Chapel Bible Fellowship in Temecula’s Wine Country hosted a forum designed to address recent court rulings by the United States Supreme Court, and how those decisions will affect The Church in America. The most common question asked was, “How did the courts get so much power?”
Harold Coleman, who heads the Salt & Light Ministry at the church, and is special counsel for the Advocates For Faith and Freedom, responded by directing everyone to the Marbury v. Madison case in 1803.
The Power of the Courts truly did begin to rapidly grow once Chief Justice John Marshall issued an opinion regarding “judicial review,” an opinion that had been festering in the new United States of America, but had not officially been launched until Marshall’s Marbury v. Madison written opinion. From that point, once the courts granted to themselves the power to be the final arbiters of the United States Constitution, judicial activism began its journey to become what is now a judicial oligarchy, where a small group of unelected judges dictate to the rest of the country their opinion regarding legislation at both the federal level, and the State level.
As a nation, we have become accustomed to The Courts acting as the final decision maker regarding the constitutionality of a law. We have grown up placing the responsibility of maintaining the rule of law in the hands of judges in various courts. We may complain every once in a while, but we’ve always been willing to say to ourselves, “but that’s the way the system is designed.” However, the system was not designed to give so much power to a bunch of lawyers that wear black robes.
There is no place in the U.S. Constitution that grants to the courts the kind of power they wield. In fact, Article III is very specific that it greatly limits the powers of the courts. At the time of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the Judicial Branch was supposed to be the weakest of the three branches of government. When John Jay was offered a return to the bench as Chief Justice by John Adams, after a term as governor of New York, Jay responded that he didn’t want the position. The lack of power, in his opinion, was beneath a man to take.
When, in 1793, the courts tried to wield too much power in the Chisolm v. Georgia case, exclaiming that the State of Georgia did not have State Sovereignty as it related to the case, the members of Congress and the State Legislatures promptly took action and proposed, and ratified, the 11th Amendment, further limiting the power of the courts.
The judges are supposed to apply the law to the cases they hear, not apply their opinion through interpretation to what they consider to be the validity of the law. The legal class, however, have always battled the limitations offered by the Constitution, and now constitutional interpretation has been moved from We the People and the States, to federal judges and their political agendas.
The States and We the People were the authors of the United States Constitution, and the document was designed to create the federal government, but limit its authorities so that the new central government would not become a tyrannical system controlling the States, or the People. Authorities are granted in a limited manner, and can only be added to by amendment. The Founding Fathers were careful not to give the courts too much power. The courts, however, saw fit to seize those powers for themselves. Because the States and the People are the authors of the Constitution, it is the States and the People that are supposed to be the final arbiters of the Constitution.
The people’s way to check the courts is through Congress. Congress possesses the power to, through legislation, strike down unconstitutional rulings. The authority in the Constitution for that power is called the “Exceptions Clause.” States may also disregard unconstitutional rulings, a power known as nullification. The question is, do the States and Congress have the willingness to wield their true power? Or, will the States and People continue to allow the courts to dictate to us their will, despite the limitations established by the rule of law and articulated by the language of the text in the United States Constitution?
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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