The Supreme Court of the United States is the one institution in which Americans have had confidence that a branch of national government is not driven by a political agenda. Citizens may not have agreed with their decisions, but they came to the conclusion that this difference of opinion was based on intellectual considerations, not political objectives for maintaining government power.
Recent attacks on the Supreme Court by national leaders have left the public questioning not just the paramount authority of the Court, but its basic desideratum in the complex matrix of a constitutional republic.
In other words, is the Supreme Court really something that is necessary for maintaining democracy?
President Biden in his recent State of the Union Speech chastised the U.S. Supreme Court Justices for being indifferent and insensitive to a woman’s reproductive rights. He implied the Justices would realize “the electoral impact of women” in this Presidential election season. By this reference, he implied that the Court had a political agenda for which they would be held accountable. In so doing, he politicized the Supreme Court and stripped it of its legitimacy to solve the conflict of constitutional issues.
The President, Congress, and activists attacking the Supreme Court leaves the public’s confidence waning in government’s ability to solve conflicts within government factions. Justices do not run for judicial office. They hold life terms. This is designed for the very purpose of avoiding political assassination when rendering tough decisions. Nine members have served well as a proper number. Justices are nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate.
The duration of justices’ terms transcends presidential administrations and Congressional majorities. This, therein, blends the cultural attitudes, party political proclivities, and national election cycles to ensure the continuity of generational intent and democratic ideologies through the times.
In reconciling one’s attitude for what is the Court’s purpose, it is critical that every American citizen understand that the Supreme Court is not the supreme law of the land.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land.
The Supreme Court’s purpose is to be the supreme arbiter on issues of constitutional dictum. The Court settles issues of conflict and legal definitions between the federal government and the states, individuals from different states contesting competing state laws of jurisdiction, and matters of civil rights between citizens, corporations, and governments. The Supreme Court enforces rules of interstate commerce, the provisions of treaties, and federal laws. The Court holds Congress accountable for the constitutionality of laws passed and the overreach of federal power. The Presidency of the United States is subject to constitutional constraints or authority determined by the Supreme Court.
The above is but a partial list of Supreme Court obligations and responsibilities to calibrate the balance of power in government and protect the individual constitutional rights of every citizen of the United States. By this, they are the supreme: determiner, decipherer, distinguisher, enforcer, maintainer, and protector in all things constitutional.
The Supreme Court does not have the authority to “change the Constitution” through opinions, “rewrite laws,” or “legislate from the bench.” Only the people can change the Constitution through amendment. Only Congress can write and pass laws. Only the President is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, can lead the country in foreign policy and diplomacy, and sign legislation into law or veto bills. Ensuring this balance of power between the branches of government, and the people’s constitutional rights are, in fact, the supreme purpose of the Supreme Court.
The United States Supreme Court’s commission transcends and connects the Constitution to the debate of eternal ordained order.
Preceding the Declaration of Independence, the philosophical dissertation of universal egalitarian natural rights had emerged from Greek antiquity. Plato, in the 5th century BC, argued that the idea of nature as a normative for human affairs was the rule of reason. Reason was defined by that order which allows an individual the freedom to make decisions for themselves that make them happy.
Socrates assumed that the city-state and the human person were similar in that justice established an environment wherein people could make decisions for their own prosperity. This order was declared natural because it was reasonable and effective in the case of human beings.
Plato found this natural law to be integral to human existence. As a part of humanity, this law always existed. In an effort to explain how such laws of equality could be eternal, in the absence of the evolutionary theory, Socrates assigned the characteristic to the Greek god Zeus, and therefore, natural law.
In later centuries, natural law was bifurcated into “divine” and “human.” Human desires were health, beauty, strength, and wealth. These desires were guided by and dependent upon divine law of prudence, moderation, justice, and courage. Personal passion required the discipline of obeying divine law. City-states evolved societally into kingdoms. The king became an agent of God in ruling in supreme authority.
John Locke, the 17th century British philosopher, believed that the natural law encompassed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property. By property he meant control of one’s own destiny. Thomas Jefferson leaned heavily on Locke in drafting the Declaration of Independence, further defining property as “pursuit of happiness.” Jefferson emphasizes that inalienable rights are ordained by God, and therefore divine. He further states “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
The Constitution of the United States, in its preamble, begins with “we the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The Constitution is the codifying document of the natural law declared in the Declaration of Independence as divine. These axioms are eternal and inalienable as to the people’s rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Supreme Court then is the supreme manager of constitutional structure and constitutional rights existing from the dawn of mankind for the governance of humanity.
The Supreme Court replaced the king as the supreme manager of natural rights.
The rhetorical debate of the ancients on natural law, declared inalienable and personal to the individual’s liberty by John Locke, used by Jefferson for the moral justification of the Declaration of Independence, and chartered by the Constitution into incorporated law for universal just governance of society, is the progression of freedom for the protection of mankind in its relationship with government.
As important as the concepts of life and liberty are, so is the confidence of the people to be able to believe that a branch of government’s (the Supreme Court) purpose and actions are to protect divine natural law as its objective without selfish agenda.
Ninety-four percent of American citizens are proud to be an American. When asked why do you believe this, they respond that America is the only country in the world based on the premise of inalienable rights of natural law. Of course, Americans do not agree on all issues. Our country is bitterly divided on many. This division though begs the question of how we are truly united as a society. If elected officials would simply express their position on an issue through the lens of the divine natural law that unites all Americans, conflicts would be less intractable. Americans are not demanding equal outcomes, only equal rights in pursuit of happiness as they so deem it to be appropriate for themselves and their families.
American citizens instinctively understand the attributes, benefits, and reality of individual freedom articulated in inalienable rights. It is the American leaders who don’t get this simple fact. It is American politicians who are pursuing rhetoric harmful to the sanctity of American order for selfish reasons to obtain or maintain power.
The hope of America is that her citizens will realize they have gotten America’s creed right. That in believing in ordained natural law, they are a member of a majority community representing like-minded citizens. It is their leaders who have succumbed to the special interests of identity politics.
And that…
America’s constitutional connection to the ancient Greeks is personification of God’s eternal, natural ordained order for mankind’s happiness and just governance.
My name is Marc Nuttle and this is what I believe.
What do you believe?
