Happy Constitution Day!
A living Constitution for a dying RepublicCelebrate Constitution Day
The United States Constitution is an extraordinary document. It protects our rights and freedoms. It outlines the blueprint of our government. And it limits the government’s power through a marvelous system of checks and balances.
But even though its provisions affect our lives every day, most Americans have never read it.
Saturday, September 17 is Constitution Day. It’s a day to recognize our good fortune in living under the system that the Constitution provides. It’s also a day to remember that all of the powers and provisions of the Constitution originate with us ― “We the People.” But most importantly, it’s a day to take a few minutes and read the elegant document that is our Constitution.
Even a brief skim will remind you of the powers we have given our government, for the good of our nation. It will also remind you of the powers our government doesn’t have ― and shouldn’t have. And it will remind you of the document’s simple elegance, and the men who crafted it so long ago.
First and foremost, however, it will remind you of your crucial role in our constitutional system and the critical need for you to keep standing up for your rights and reminding the government of the limits of its power.
So take a moment, pick up or download a copy of the Constitution, and read it. It’s well worth the time.
This is why FDR may indeed be the worst president ever.Prior to the reign of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the courts were still largely populated with originalists, who properly rendered legal interpretation based on construction of the Constitution's "original intent." However, FDR grossly exceeded the Constitutional limits upon the authority of his office and that of the legislature in his folly to end The Great Depression (the latter falling victim to World War II -- not FDR's social and economic engineering). FDR's extra-constitutional exploits opened the door for the judiciary to follow the same path -- to read into the Constitution what was necessary to make it conform to the demands of the prevailing political will.
In the decades that followed, the notion of a "Living Constitution," one subject to all manner of judicial interpretation, took hold in the federal courts. Judicial activists, those who legislate from the bench by issuing rulings based on their personal interpretation of the Constitution, or at the behest of likeminded special-interest constituencies, were nominated for the federal bench and confirmed in droves.
This degradation of law was codified by the Warren Court in Trop v. Dulles (1958). In that ruling, the High Court noted that the Constitution should comport with "evolving standards...that mark the progress of a maturing society." In other words, it had now become a fully pliable document. Indeed, the Constitution has become "a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please," as Thomas Jefferson warned, and the judiciary, in Jefferson's words, "the Despotic Branch."
LINKThe Federalist Papers, as the definitive explication of our Constitution's original intent, clearly define original intent in regards to Constitutional interpretation. In Federalist No. 78 Alexander Hamilton writes, "[The Judicial Branch] may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment...liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments." In Federalist No. 81 Hamilton notes, "[T]here is not a syllable in the [Constitution] which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution...."
George Washington advised, "The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, 'till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People is sacredly obligatory upon all."
Today, 218 years hence, Justice Antonin Scalia says of judicial activism, "As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to 'do what the people want,' instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically."
Its time we returned to the basis of our nation. Strict interpretation of the consitution and stop this judicial activism.
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Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny
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