The Courts Are Guilty of Failing to Do Their Job

Townhall 

So, I want to get this straight, because I’m a little confused. We’re supposed to respect federal judges who are appointed for life and not subject to any kind of outside pressure by design. We’re supposed to allow our democracy – yes, I know it’s a constitutional republic, but let’s not be anally retentive about these things – to have a built-in veto by people we didn’t vote for and can’t, as a practical matter, remove. Our only protection against them running rampant with their personal prejudices and peccadillos is their own character. But what if they don’t have any character? What if they do whatever they damn well please? Do We the People just have to take it? Because that’s not going to happen. If it’s a choice between serfdom with Article III – no, Ilhan Omar, that is not Article One Hundred Eleven – and liberty without Article III, adios Article III.

If and when the judiciary dies, and it’s not looking so great right now, the cause of death on the certificate is going to be suicide.

Now, I’ve been in front of a lot of federal judges during 30 years as a lawyer, and the big difference between federal judges and God is that God doesn’t think He’s a federal judge. There are some good ones out there, some stunning mediocrities for such a prestigious post, and some insane ones who really let their incredible power go to their heads. And it is an incredible power, with an incredible lack of accountability. But under our Constitution, properly understood, that can work. It gives them the ability to stand up for the Constitution against partisan pressure. Of course, the problem is that far too many are Democrats who stand up for partisan pressure against the Constitution. Like so much of our Constitution, it requires character to function. It requires a judge to look at the facts and the law and decide the case according to them, even when that decision runs against what he, she, or whatever weird pronoun the Democrat appointee prefers. Sometimes, as a judge, you have to rule against what you want. And leftists aren’t good at that.

In fact, leftists are actively against that. The Constitution envisions a system where rights, responsibilities, and procedures are clearly set, and you apply the facts to those, and the result is what the result is. Sometimes, you lose. Leftists can’t abide by that because they can’t lose. Leftism is the highest morality, the only morality, and anything that helps leftism is necessary, proper, and essential. You can’t be a leftist judge and rule against a leftist position. It’s inconceivable because the purpose of the law is not to create fair outcomes. The purpose of the law, like every other tool, is to increase leftism. When you understand that, you understand everything you need to know about why the courts are collapsing upon themselves.

For example, not long ago, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made a ruling in some case involving transsexual weirdness where she explained that a state had no right to deny to kids (or rather, their Münchausen) what she characterized as medical care and what normal people characterize as mutilation. Then, in another case, this one involving psychologists not being allowed to treat people for transsexual weirdness, she explained that it was essential that the government be able to decree that you couldn’t get medical care to cure your transsexual weirdness. It was a total 180-degree change, and it didn’t matter to her. At all. Similarly, they eagerly embraced California’s redistricting, but the three liberal judges decided Texas couldn’t do the same thing.

To function as intended, the Constitution requires the consistent application of legal principles to different fact patterns. This provides equal justice. The ruling should be the same whether a party is right-wing, left-wing, or no wing at all. But consistency, and therefore justice, has nothing to do with legal analysis to a leftist. The law exists to enforce and promote leftism, that’s all. You have no rights. There are no procedures. There is only leftism.

Look at what’s happening in Virginia with that shriveled, sour apple doll woman governor’s gerrymandering power grab. There are very clear provisions in the Virginia Constitution and its law about how you go about acting on a constitutional amendment, and there’s no real dispute that the Democrats failed to abide by. Oh, they claim they did, but they know they didn’t, and everybody knows they didn’t, and the fact that they didn’t is utterly irrelevant to them. A trial court enjoined the referendum result, and the case was before the Virginia Supreme Court this week. Again, there’s no real dispute over the facts. It wasn’t enacted in accordance with the rules, so it shouldn’t stand. But it’s going to stand. The Virginia Supreme Court is absolutely not going to enforce the rules because enforcing the rules would get in the way of what the leftists want, which is for the gerrymander to succeed. And so, it will, the law be damned.

And it’s happening in all these dumb district court rulings. You need to understand that when they rule against Donald Trump, there’s no legal basis for it. It’s not even close, which is why these pronouncements from the judges with the Star Wars names in all the commie venues like the Northern District of Tatooine keep getting overturned. Look at the ballroom case. There’s a thing called standing. You can’t sue when you don’t have skin in the game, where you are not going to suffer a real, cognizable injury of some sort unless you are given relief by the court.  What was the standing in this case? Who was going to suffer a real injury from Donald Trump building a ballroom? According to this judge, it was some woman walking her dog who might have looked at it and not liked it. If this were a thing, any one of us could sue Obama for that weird library that looks like the building is infected with some sort of brutalist Peyronie’s Disease.

But it’s not a thing. It’s ridiculous. Similarly, there is the bizarre notion by another judge that the Congress of the United States acted unconstitutionally by refusing to appropriate funds to support baby killing. That’s certainly an interesting and innovative notion, and of course, it has nothing to do with the Constitution, but the Democrats hate fetuses, so it’s OK.

We have the judge who allowed the ridiculous case brought by that kook in New York, accusing Donald Trump of molesting her 30 years ago, without a witness, like he would ever have given her a second glance. Or you have the judge who allowed the unprecedented civil suit against him in New York. Then there’s the judge who allowed the unprecedented criminal case against him in New York; those garbage convictions will soon be overturned on appeal. The pardons of the J6 political prisoners were well justified by the outrageous and disgraceful conduct of the judges in allowing ridiculous charges against them, in failing to change venue when they faced grotesquely biased juries, in disallowing bail, and in general, railroading them.

So we’re back to the big question – why have judges? If judges are simply going to be independent actors who substitute their own personal belief system for the law in making their rulings, why do we have them at all in a democracy? What is the point of adding this extra layer between our elected representatives and the enforcement of the law? What justification is there for having judges if they’re just unaccountable people doing whatever they want? How is that democracy?

Well, it isn’t, as everyone can see, which is why Article III is going to go away if Chief Justice John Roberts doesn’t rein in these clowns on the federal bench, and if the states don’t rein in their own. Remember, all judges can do is rule. They can’t enforce. They don’t have any guys with guns. That’s the executive, and if there’s a critical mass of public support for the executive to ignore the courts, the executive is going to ignore the courts.

And that critical mass of public support for ignoring the courts is being created by the courts themselves. People aren’t going to put up with being told “No” based not on law, but on whim. People will accept losing if they think the process is fair. They won’t accept losing if they think the process is rigged, but rigging is exactly what leftism is all about. Leftism is, by definition, rigging the system to create an outcome that leftists want. We’re not going to do that. And if the judiciary wants to keep existing, it had better figure that out before the American people find it guilty of failure.