Asheville – Editor’s Note: The author has extended the series by an additional 2 parts. The One Nation Under Judges series will continue until issue 34.
Congress has the power, providing it has the will
Article III empowers Congress to establish lower courts subordinate to the Supreme Court and to determine the original and appellate jurisdiction of these courts as well as the Supreme Court.It therefore has the power to disburse with such courts and/or to change the jurisdiction.
The President has the authority to nominate candidates to the federal bench who can take office with the advice and consent of the Senate. They have the duty to appoint men and women who will uphold the intent of the Constitution. Filibusters are not a constitutional impediment to such advice unless Congress has no stomach for upholding their sworn duties. If this nation’s choice of judges remains subject to unconstitutional filibusters, then those who shrivel and shirk their sworn responsibilities are not worthy of their office.
The House of Representatives can impeach judges, and the Senate can try them and remove them. This has rarely if ever been done, but then rarely has it become more apparent that drastic action is needed. Certainly, the fearless arrogance of the judiciary should not be met with Congressional timidity.
In 1980, Congress passed a law that created a process for removing judges for misconduct or disability. The law’s glaring weakness is that it allows the chief justice and other judicial members to attest to a judge’s inabilities. A process controlled by the judges will do little to correct the status quo.
Perhaps the most major practical power that Congress holds is the power to limit the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over various laws.
Article III plainly states that the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is tempered “…with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.”
Part of the problem here is that each bill must have the explicit and required language in it so that it will be qualified under this provision. One such bill that is currently pending in Congress is the Marriage Protection Act, which is proposed specifically to remove the Court’s jurisdiction from the Defense of Marriage Act. (See sidebar of cases)
Moreover, the Court has attempted in a few cases to stick its long nose into this constitutional prerogative of Congress and to declare such actions unconstitutional.
Nevertheless, Congress needs to augment and use this specific power, and can do so in several ways.
It could establish its own Constitutional Integrity Committee for the explicit purpose of routinely and regularly ensuring that the Supreme Court ceased issuing its non-judiciary opinions and maintained the integrity of judicial clarity for which it was established. This committee could be composed of nine members appointed to 5-year terms. Four could be appointed by the House, three by the Senate, and two by the President. These members would be tasked with reviewing Supreme Court decisions and, if necessary, decisions from other federal courts to ensure that they were consistent with the language of the Constitution.
Should the Committee find otherwise, then the Supreme Court would have to rectify their ruling or else the Congress would immediately remove the Court from having jurisdiction over the law involved and/or remove the lower court altogether if such rulings were habitual. This would put the court on notice that it, too, was being watched.
Finally, a Constitutional Amendment could be proposed that would no longer give lifetime membership to judges on the courts. Somewhere between a nine and a twelve-year term would certainly be adequate to ensure that judges would be protected while attempting to provide judicial impartiality.
Our Constitution is being shredded page by page on a daily basis by judicial interpretations pulled out of thin air. It is time for judicial tyranny to be reigned in or else we will cease to exist as the nation we were, and all the blood spilled to preserve what we were will have been shed for naught.
And if we cannot hold on to what we were, we will become what we were not, and that is exactly who we will be.
Undermining religious beliefs
Part of the First Amendment of the Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
It seems simple enough. Our founders did not want the federal government to establish a state religion, and they wanted to be sure that any citizen could worship in freedom wherever and whenever he or she saw fit. Notice that this is in the very first amendment.
However, in 1947, the Court in Everson v. Board of Education re-wrote this Amendment by incorrectly seizing from a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists Jefferson’s phrase that there should be a “wall of separation” between church and state.
Jefferson’s meaning, of course, was that the state should not establish a religion.
However, the courts decided that the First Amendment means that instead of citizens having the right to freedom “of” religion, they have the right to freedom “from” religion. In Lee v. Wiseman in 1992, the Court inaugurated its “coercion test”, which promulgated a new nonexistent constitutional “right” not to be offended and not to feel uncomfortable by having to listen to religious expression in a public place.
The Court has hopelessly twisted the meaning of this part of the First Amendment into a number of absurd judicial outcomes, leaving a great deal of confusion in their wake.
(To explore the subject in more detail, check Barry Krusch’s Web site, www.krusch.com/real/first.html.)
Editor’s Note: Part 5 will be in the upcoming issue 33.