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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Thursday, November 3, 2011

The Federal Courts - Power Divided


John Jay
1st Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
Federalist Governor of New York
Co-Author of the Federalist Papers


The genius of our Federalist Founding Fathers was seeing the evil in men.

Their answer was to divide power in so many ways that no one politician could establish a dictatorship.



By Gary;

The Founding Fathers knew all too well that the entire history of mankind is a series of one savage dictatorship after another by an elite ruling class that looted the wealth of their countries.

For almost the entire history of the world the common people had virtually no rights of any kind.  The people were at the mercy of local thugs and murderers with fancy titles like Count, Emir, Duke, Prince, Caesar, Shah or Czar.

Men always want to gather more and more power into their hands.  That is why the Founders established two houses of Congress that would always fight with each other as well as a President who would in then fight endlessly with Congress.  The leaders would all fight among themselves in trying to build personal power.  Only then, the Founders felt, would the liberty of the people be safe.

What is often overlooked is the creation of an independent judiciary of judges appointed for life.

 
The courts being overlooked is totally understandable.  There are few things more boring in life than to read the opinions of lawyers and judges.

The great Federalist judges appointed by George Washington and John Adams established the power of this third branch of government.  Both Federalist Chief Justices John Jay and John Marshall built the power of the court to review and block the actions of the other two branches of government.

The Founders were right.  President after President has tried to take the law into his own hands.  From Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson to Abraham Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Comrade Obama, they all want more and more power.

Sometimes it is only the courts that stand in the way of power grabs by our Presidents.

9th Circuit Court of Appeals

All this was brought to my mind as Comrade Obama is looking to appoint several judges to openings on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Nothing illustrates the division of power and the power of lifetime appointments more than the current make up of the 9th Circuit Court in the chart on the right.

On the 9th there are 43 Federal Judges spanning generations of American history.  The politics of so many Presidents are represented in current court opinions.

It is staggering that through their judicial appointments the administrations of John Kennedy and Richard Nixon are still having an impact on the policies of government in 2011.

This is what the Founders wanted.  Chief Justice John Marshall was still making law and directing the nation almost 60 years after serving with George Washington at Valley Forge and 35 years after being appointed to the bench by John Adams.

The system must be working, because at every point in history every political party has screamed about those damn lifetime judges and their power . . . . thank God they are there to watch over the Constitution.

The Founding Fathers divided power to protect the liberty of the people.
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