Home judicial activism America is Not a Nation Ruled by Judges
Home judicial activism America is Not a Nation Ruled by Judges

America is Not a Nation Ruled by Judges

When President Trump tweeted that his measure to protect Americans from Islamic terror was a “travel ban” and that it should never have been watered down, he was right.

Calling it a pause hasn’t appeased a single of the radical judges abusing their authority. It doesn’t matter what the lawyers call it, when courts insist on referencing President Trump’s campaign rhetoric instead. Watering down the ban achieved nothing. The judicial coup can’t be appeased with a “moderate” ban.

Stripping Iraq from the list of countries undermined the effectiveness of the measure considering that the vast majority of refugees being investigated for terror links in this country are Iraqis.

Most of the rest are from the other countries listed on the travel ban.

And the failure to protect Middle Eastern Christians by prioritizing them as refugees is a left-wing war crime. The lawyers, activists, media bosses and judges responsible for it have blood on their hands. Even as they mouth hollow platitudes about compassion, they have become complicit in Islamic genocide.

Waiting on the Supreme Court didn't work. The temporary compromise measure violated presidential authority while giving the left the room it needed to continue its judicial coup by expanding "prior relationship" to mean anything while unconstitutionally undermining the refugee cap.

There are legitimate debates about the limits of presidential authority in every administration. It’s fair to question whether any president, of any party, should be able to engage in military action without Congress because the Constitution grants the legislative branch the authority to declare war. But there can be no doubt whatsoever that President Trump is acting within his legal authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act which grants him the authority to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants” for as long as he thinks it’s necessary.

Obama made use of this power to temporarily halt Iraqi migration. So have other presidents in the past. Immigration is in the hands of Congress and the White House. It is not up to judges to decide who can come to America.

Our entire system of immigration “discriminates” based on religion and national origin. It allots visas and refugee status based on national origin and membership in persecuted religious groups.

If the judicial coup succeeds, elected officials will lose their authority over immigration. And that means that the American people will lose all control over immigration.

The implications go far beyond the travel ban.

Judge Derrick Watson, an Obama pal, didn’t just go after the ban, but asserted that he had the authority to decide how many refugees should be allowed in. The Supreme Court chose to split the difference there. It’s a short hop and a skip from there to judges deciding that they have the constitutional authority to set the annual number of refugees and immigrants to prevent “discrimination” by the elected branches.

If you want to imagine the end of America, that’s a good place to start.


Federal courts have been unconstitutionally treating states like this for far too long, intervening in everything from elections to prison populations, but now they’re using the general anti-Trump hysteria to assert judicial supremacy over the elected branches of government.

If this judicial coup is allowed to stand, anything that any White House official or member of Congress says at any time in the past, can and will be used by Federal courts to seize control over any policy.

And then we will be living under a permanent reign of judicial terror.

This was the nightmare loophole that opened up when we declared that preventing discrimination was such a compelling interest that it could be used to override nearly everything else. Now the legal butcher’s bill might be coming due. And when it arrives, the Bill of Rights will cease to exist and the elected branches of government will wither under the shadow of black robes and falling gavels.

That is what is at stake here.

President Trump isn’t just defending us against Islamic terror. It’s up to him to defend government of the people against two political coups; one that seeks to reverse the results of the election with a manufactured scandal based on a Hillary conspiracy theory and the other that aspires to make elections irrelevant through a judicial ruling class.

A civil war is underway. Trump, like Lincoln, isn’t just fighting an elitist Democrat ruling class embedded in secessionist enclaves of gated communities surrounded by political plantations of minority poor.

Both Republican presidents had to face off in a civil war against judicial supremacy.

During the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Abraham Lincoln asserted that the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case did not suffice to “have the citizen conform his vote to that decision; the member of Congress, his; the President, his use of the veto power”.

Lincoln then quoted Thomas Jefferson’s warning that, “to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions” would be “a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy”.

And that is exactly what judicial supremacy has done.

Thomas Jefferson cautioned that judges have "the same passions for party, for power" and "their power is the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control."

He stated firmly, "The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign with themselves."

Both the first Democratic-Republican and the first Republican presidents rejected judicial supremacy. They did so because it undermined a government of the people and imposed a judicial oligarchy.

What of the first Democrat president? In his veto of the Bank of the United States, President Andrew Jackson affirmed Jefferson’s “co-equal” and “co-sovereign” principle stating that, “the Congress, the Executive and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution.”

Jackson’s portrait now hangs over President Trump in the Oval Office. It is up to Trump to defend Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln’s understanding of the Constitution against judicial supremacy.

For too long the conservative position has been that we must defend the Constitution from judicial activism by putting the right sort of men on the Supreme Court. This approach has been somewhat successful. But trying to solve the abuse of judicial authority with judicial authority is like plugging a leak with water. Conservatives seek judicial saints who will never overstep the boundaries of their power while the left merely needs to find judges who will have no compunction about abusing their authority.

That is the judicial coup which has placed us in a political stalemate. Conservatives hope that the Supreme Court will follow the Constitution. And if it doesn’t, a whole new “law of the land” appears.

Even if the Supreme Court does the right thing, the challenges won’t end. And the judicial coup will have proven that its members can freeze any presidential policy for the better part of a year while the administration runs a gauntlet of political appointees who deliberately humiliate and undermine it.

And they won’t stop now.

Conservatives should continue seeking judges who will respect the Constitution. But truly respecting and protecting the Constitution means rejecting judicial supremacy. And the battle against judicial supremacy can’t be fought and won in the courts. Only the White House can defy the courts.

The Civil War was fought over the supremacy of the Constitution. Then, as now, the Democrat secessionists privileged the Supreme Court’s interpretation over the written text of the Constitution.

In his inaugural address, President Lincoln opposed judicial supremacy, warning that if government policy for the entire country is “irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court... the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers.”

During the Civil War, he rejected a decision by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney and arrested Judge Richard Bennett Carmichael. Judge William Matthew Merrick, an Associate Justice of the D.C. Circuit Court, was placed under house arrest and had his salary suspended. Merrick, like today’s secessionist Democrat judges had attempted to undermine the war effort through legal obstructionism.

The Civil War should have settled the question of judicial supremacy. But Democrats snuck their judicial fetish through the back door until it has become the greatest threat to our rights and our freedoms.

And it must be defeated again.

Lincoln and Jackson defied judicial supremacy by rejecting its illegitimate authority. President Trump must do the same. The travel ban is within his authority. No serious legal challenge has been made to that authority. It is the legality of his motives that has come under constant attack, but the President of the United States is not obligated to justify his motives to a paternal court to exercise his authority.

By ignoring the courts, President Trump will restore respect for his authority, for the separation of powers and for the power of the people to rule themselves.

And he will be following in the tradition of Jefferson, Lincoln and Jackson.

The majority of Americans support his policy. The law, in both the legislative text and judicial precedent, supports his actions. As the death toll in Europe mounts, they are waiting for him to do the right thing.





Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

Thank you for reading.

Comments

  1. D.D.Mao15/7/17

    If we are concerned about "Rule of Law" lets at least be consistent in it's application.

    I am of course talking about the "whataboutism" argument that is so prevalent in President Trumps defense among his supporters. Ben Shapiro in a recent column pointed out how "the right has now sunk to a point where it engages in a fantasy that the lefts dishonesty can now justify conservative dishonesty". It actually exhibits the hypocrisy of the right where they can make any excuse to justify this mode of thinking. Where "we complained about Loretta Lynch meeting President Clinton on the tarmac of an airport but Trumps sons meeting with Russian lawyers under the guise of acquiring campaign information is a nothing burger". We showed outrage when Hillary Clintons foundation was taking money from foreign governments but Trumps private business ventures in Russia don't raise a ripple. We hear the excuse that "fighting the left requires throwing out morality of means in favor of morality of ends". We hear the excuse that under normal circumstances we would follow morals but if Hillary gets the presidency or the left gets control the Republic is finished. It's so easy to paint who ever or whatever as the devil to justify lowering your principles in order to ease your conscience. As Ben stated "The goal should be to reinforce moral standards not to undermine them. But that goal seems to be receding into the distance as we use "whataboutism" as a club directed at destroying principles. Even kindergarteners learn "but he did it too" isn't an excuse for bad behavior."

    I know you find it troubling but the inconvenient truth is that the REPUBLICAN HELD CONGRESS have made no serious progress on a budget despite looming fall deadlines. Promises to build an ambitious infrastructure program have faded and tax reform has yet to be tackled beyond rhetoric. Meanwhile the repeal(?)of Obamacare is being drawn up in secret behind closed doors just as the original version had. This is compounded by the fact that the President has no idea what is in the legislation nor any idea on how to get it passed. He simply wants a photo op signing it into law. And when it shown to be the shell game the Republican party has been known to constantly pull he then will mock the bill as he did after it passed through the House.

    Now for the last culprit in this saga. It would seem the right wing media for all intensive purposes have thrown objectivity out the window and show a strong resemblance to the Fred Mc Murray character "Mr. Keifer" in the movie "Caine Mutiny". They stir up the ashes and channel the rights rage in this rebellion and when this ill conceived adventure goes belly up they step back and plead innocent. Sure it's easy to concoct a "Civil War" by blaming the MSM, left wing universities, fake news, politically motivated judges and illegal aliens but as I pointed out above we need to look closer to home for the answer.

    Pssst........And electing more celebrity incompetents like Kid Rock running for the Michigan Senate seat isn't the answer.






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  2. Infidel15/7/17

    Very good article. The judges already ruined California, by overturning Prop. 187.

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  3. I totally agree. The judge in Hawaii hates Trump. Everyone knows it and his decision to block the ban is based on personal opinion and not to protect the people. This latest ruling with cousins and others allowed in is a crime. They are hiring extra police in Hawaii to keep homeless people out of the parks, and this idiot wants to allow more in to burden the taxpayer. He should instantly be removed and sent to jail for treason against the United States.

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  4. I have been concerned over this for some time and now more so that this 2-bit judge in Hawaii has assumed control as the dictator in chief of America. His basis for his ruling is things Trump said prior to taking office on the campaign trail. Let us turn back only a few pages in time to Bill Clinton, a open military hater and draft dodger. His ACTIONS taken prior to being elected clearly disqualify him to be the POTUS and the Commander-in-Chief. We are going in the most dangerous direction a country could go in...

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  5. Anonymous15/7/17

    Very much agree with the sentiments and analysis. However, because Pres Trump has been smeared in particular as going to be dictator, I think he is being very cautious not to feed into that scenario. As is also Sessions trying to be strictly playing it by the rules.

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  6. So, the solution to the problem of Judicial supremacy is the Trump administration fighting these judges, and possibly winning a USSC decision? That's sort of a circular firing squad with American citizens in the middle.

    The only Constitutional solution to a rogue judge is political. Congress must be willing to impeach an activist judge for a decision which ignores or subjugates Constitutional law to his/her own will. That is what is happening with the recent immigration "ban" (i.e. temporary halt) decisions, and their decisions are egregiously devoid of Constitutional justification.

    However, just as we hear that the current GOP led congress intends to replace socialist Obamacare with socialist-light RINOCARE, we hear not a peep of protest, and no "articles of impeachment" for the activist judges involved. The rational is that impeachment of a federal judge requires some sort of mythological standard of "high crimes and misdemeanors", as if running roughshod over the Constitution constitutes no such thing.

    Ultimately, the problem is "we the people", i.e. the American people. We have accepted so little from our elected representatives for so long, that the chains we now feel upon our freedom with the abrogation of Constitutional law, are our own. We do, in fact, have the corrupt government we deserve, and only a civil war or revolution will "reset" American society back to the one ruled under a constitution, as foreseen by the country's founding fathers. Elections and law no longer mean anything in America.

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  7. This just comes to prove my old theory that the left is at the root of all evil. And the right just doesn't have the strength of will, the determination, the pair to fight them. Fact. Sorry if it grieves some people.

    I get so frustrated when I hear the usual Monday Morning Quarterbacks gang up on President Trump for "letting them down." In order for Trump to achieve everything the "purists" want in only eight months he would have had to act like an absolute monarch from the get go. Since our country is a constitutional republic that is out of the question (though it never stopped one Barak Hussein Obama from ruling by fiat for 8 years). On top of that, Trump has to face the back-stabbers in his own party: the establishment Republican Trump-phobes. The enemies from within, the eternal cavers-in ... oh, pardon me, I mean the nice republicans who want to reach across the aisle, of course ... the John McCains, the Ryans, the Grahams, the Collins, and all the rest of the merry crowd, who insist of courting a press that will continue to hate them until they officially join the democrat party and put the beloved D after their name.

    Trump cannot do everything on his own. He needs the support of his party, who should be staunchly defending him, fighting the left, giving as well as Trump takes. And he is not getting that. Few, if any, truly conservative presidents ever got that. The result is that all our most sacred institutions are surrendering to the left. The once-sacrosanct SCOTUS has not turned into the Imperial Judiciary.

    Until our side gets off the "Me too" truck and acquires the same discipline, the determination, and above all the courage to fight - AND defeat - the left, as they ceaselessly work to defeat us, we will continue to lose even when we win.

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  8. Where have you been living, Mr. Greenfield? America IS a nation ruled by judges. And judicial supremacist Donald J. Trump is unlikely to be the man to fix it.

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  9. Anonymous15/7/17

    Thank you, Daniel. As always, your words are so straight to the heart correct. What can we do? Is there nothing short of civil war to stop the progs destruction of our country? I may not be able to do much, but sign me up for this war!

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  10. Anonymous15/7/17

    Not a single other Republican primary candidate would have persisted with the same resolve and courage as our magnificent President Trump. He also needs the wisdom and historical depth in this article.

    We came within an election of losing our Republic and Civilization; now we're on the arduous way back to our Founders' Dream. Greenfield and Horowitz correctly call this a Civil War; sound the alarms!

    Save us from the faint hearted George Will, William Kristol, David Brooks; their patricianism never prepared us for leftist ambushes.
    Our liberty is too precious for pantywaists.

    Charlie

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  11. Just a common 'tater15/7/17

    Thank you for bringing this topic up. I have been telling anyone willing to listen that Trump made a major mistake in how he handled this.

    First, he needed to wait until he had an attorney general and a solicitor general that will back him up before ordering the immigration freeze on muslims and focusing on admitting Christians.

    Second, when the expected court and judge shopping expedition showed up with a "court order" he needed to respond with a an executive order that did the following:
    1. Cite the constitution and federal laws that give the president the authority he used to make the executive order
    2. Tell the court they have no jurisdiction in matters of security, including sending the judge the statement from the supreme court that clarified that issue
    3. Order CBP, ICE, and the FBI to arrest any court marshal, bailiff, clerk, or even a judge that attempts to interfere with any immigration officer's duties. Arrest any state official that attempts to interfere with any immigration officer's duties. Refuse any court documents and advise the delivery person of the solicitor general's address.

    Last, hold the pay of any judge that attempts to interfere with the legitimate functions of the federal government.

    I would like to hear from a constitutional expert, other than dershowitz or chomsky regarding this.

    Thanks!

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  12. Anonymous15/7/17

    Yes!

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  13. And if Trump desires in-the-street support for defying the courts, he can activate the National Guards across the country and (oh, still my trembling heart!!) call on civilian militias to do the same. Please, please, please.... I want to blow the dust out of my AR-15 anyway.

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  14. I couldn't agree more. Trump needs to ignore the courts (Lincoln did), take his case directly to the American people, and dare Congress to impeach him. I think most Republicans in Congress understand that if they vote to impeach Trump, they will be ex-members of Congress in very short order.

    I suspect that this stance would gain Trump even more support from the public than he currently has.



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  15. D.D.Mao15/7/17

    Daniel:
    This is a private letter between you and me and I ask that you PLEASE DO NOT POST IT.

    I have come to realize that my comments on your site are getting repetitive and I'm sure boring. I have decided therefore not going to post any more but want to take this opportunity to thank you for publishing them even when they went against your article. Your patience was more than anyone could ask for. I'll continue to follow your columns religiously.

    Wishing you all the best.........Bob Manderville (D.D.Mao)

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  16. Anonymous16/7/17

    Maybe that Hawaiian judge needs some cliton talking to for getting his mind straight on how the laws are to protect us from the gubbermint and our foreign and domestic enemies. Not turn into a domestic enemy.
    Heltau

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  17. Bob, I value your comments and your departure would be a shame.

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  18. Anonymous16/7/17

    The Ikhwan Lite party doesn't want live Christian refugees as possible conservative voters, it's better that they die at the hands of Moslems in whatever totalitarian Islamic state they're unfortunate enough to reside in.

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  19. In California, today we have 80 Assembly members (fixed in 1854, state population then 207,556, persons per districts 2,594) and 40 State Senators (fixed 1862, state population then 416,045, person per districts 10,401). With the population in California today now approaching 40,000,000, the 80 Assembly districts are 490,699 persons and the 40 Senate districts are 981,397.

    In 1862, California had a total of about 60 judges in the state. Today the are about 2,200judges (including court commissioners). Today 120 legislators (80 Assembly = 40 Senators) compared to 2,200 judges = 1 legislator to 18+ judges. If you just single out Assembly members, its 1 Assembly member to 27+ judges.

    In 1911 the House of Representatives was fixed at 435, with a population of less than 105,710,620, and an average of House district size of less than 243,013 people. Today the population of the over 322,762,018 and an average House district size of 741,982 people.

    Today there are 874 Article III federal judges. 874 fed judges to 435 reps = 2 to 1.

    In pertinent part, Federalist No. 49 states: “…The members of the executive and judiciary departments are few in number, and can be personally known to a small part only of the people. The latter, by the mode of their appointment, as well as by the nature and permanency of it, are too far removed from the people to share much in their prepossessions. … The members of the legislative department, on the other hand, are numerous. They are distributed and dwell among the people at large. Their connections of blood, of friendship, and of acquaintance embrace a great proportion of the most influential part of the society. The nature of their public trust implies a personal influence among the people, and that they are more immediately the confidential guardians of the rights and liberties of the people. …”

    Have you heard that from the media? The Dem party? The Repub party? Academia? So much for self- governance. See http://www.thirty-thousand.org/ . GLZ.
    Gary L. Zerman

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  20. Nor are we ruled by regulatory agency chiefs either which is just as nefarious and inscrutable.

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