Demystifying the Judicial System – From Building On The American Heritage Series: Of all the nation’s branches of government, the judicial branch is the most commonly misunderstood. With a court system that bears little resemblance to the constitution, it’s time to demystify our nation’s judicial branch. What was the original purpose of the judicial branch? How do we hold our courts accountable? Tune in to hear David Barton and Rick Green as they discuss the role of judges in American history and what part they should play in government today.

Air Date: 07/13/2022

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

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Here we go to Building on the American Heritage Series with David Barton.

BUILDING ON THE AMERICAN HERITAGE SERIES WITH DAVID BARTON

Rick:

Alright, David, our topic today is the judiciary and we do talk about judges a lot in the news these days. But sometimes I think our perception may be wrong about the proper role of the judiciary.

David:

It is a lot of times our perception is based on what people tell us especially what Judges tell us. Judges try to define their role. The constitution is what defines their role. And in the case of Christians, the Bible also clearly defines the roles of Judges and Judges are a big deal the Bible. Lots of passages that talk about the qualifications of Judges, the behavior, the appointment of Judges, how they conduct themselves.

So the Bible has a lot to say about Judges. Matter of fact, one of our early Founding Fathers about the American Jurisprudence system, James Kent said our whole system of appeals courts came out of the Bible, because Samuel, the Judge rode from Gilgal, all these places to Judge the people and so that’s why we have traveling courts that move from place to place. And so much of what we had in tradition actually came out of the Bible.

But because we’ve lost that, we don’t read the Constitution like we should, we’ve really gotten into a bunch of myths that we bought into today. We buy into the myth that federal Judges are appointed for life. Founding Fathers says no, they aren’t. Constitution says no, they aren’t.

Rick:

But that’s what most people believe?

An Independent Branch?

David:

That’s what most people think. Most people think the judiciary is an independent branch. No, it’s not an independent branch. No branch is independent from the people. All three branches are accountable.

There’s tons of checks and balances in the Constitution to make sure the judiciary is not an independent branch. They were never to be separate from the other two branches as far as you go, as can’t touch us with the Judges. No, never at all in any way, shape, fashion form.

Rick:

Wouldn’t that make any branch or any person…

David:

That making it sure. You can do anything you want if you can’t be touched and held accountable for and that’s never designed because government comes from we the people; it’s reflect the consent of the governed as our documents tell us. So we have those kinds of issues. We’ve also got issues. We’re told that only the Judges get to decide what’s constitutional or not.

No.  James Madison, the other guy said all three branches get to decide what’s constitutional. That’s how you have checks and balances. The court may say it’s constitutional, the other two branches said no, it’s not.

Deciding Constitutionality

Rick:

And that’s a shocking one for people because we think only the court can determine constitutionality. You’re saying the President has the right to do that, Congress has the right to do that as well?

David:

In the case of one of the earliest examples is Congress passed a law called the Alien Sedition Act, it said that if you criticize the government of the United States, you’re going to jail. The court didn’t strike as unconstitutional. But the President Jefferson got in there and said that is a wacky law: you can’t throw people in jail for saying something bad about the government. 25 people had been taken to court on that law, 10 were sitting in jail because of it.

President Jefferson comes in and says that’s an unconstitutional law, turn everybody out of jail. So, all three branches have the ability to determine constitutionality. You don’t let just a body of nine people or the majority of nine people, five people determine what’s constitutional for the whole nation. No, no, that that’s never part of design.

Rick:

So they all have the ability to do that. Are they all, we often hear they’re equal branches?

David:

They’re not equal branches. They’re separate branches. But they’re all accountable. As a matter of fact, that federalist papers right here, very clear, now, federalist papers written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, both of them signed the Constitution and John Jay, the original Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, they say in here that the legislative branch predominates; that’s the most powerful branch.

The Judiciary Branch

They also say that judiciary branch is the weakest of all the branches, by far the weakest. Talks about the comparison, it says it has no power over the sword, over the parents, it can’t influence society or policy. I mean, they go through and said, they’re not co equal.

They said, legislative is the biggest branch because that’s the one closest to the people. It’s got the most power. You look at Article I of the Constitution, really long. The next most powerful branch is the Executive because people choose the Executive, but only every four years so that Article II is a little shorter. But the tiniest article of all of the three in the Constitution is Article III:

Judiciary, because they’re not chosen, they’re not elected, therefore, they get fewer opportunities to do anything. They have very limited opportunities. And so the Founding Fathers made real clear that they’re not co equal branches. As they said in Federalist Papers, liberties is the people will never be endangered by the Judges because they don’t have any power.

Rick:

Wish it was still that way.

David:

Wish it was still that way. But those are some of the judicial myths. We’ve grown to accept that are historically fallacious, and they’re even biblically fallacious in many ways, and the Bible is the basis of our judicial system. It’s just that most people don’t know that, but we’ll get to look at that.

Lifetime Appointments?

Rick:

Well, because of how much Judges have been influenced in the culture lately, we got a lot of questions on this one.

Guest 1:

Since our Judges are appointed for lifetime, how do we hold them accountable?

Rick:

So where is the accountability if a judge is appointed for their whole life?

David:

Well, the first part is they’re not appointed for life. That’s one of the things that people think today. And this is one of the great judicial myths that’s out there that’s absolutely not accurate. If you go back and look at the Constitution, Article III deals with judiciary.

There’s nothing in there about Judges being appointed for life. They’re not appointed for life. Matter of fact, you have to back up before that.

You go back to 1765, the king was appointing Judges in America. And starting in 1765, it was Samuel Adams, the Father of the American Revolution, who started ringing the alarm bell saying, hey, we got a bad problem here, the king has started appointing Judges for life over here. That’s a really bad deal. And Sam Adams said, and the other bad deal is these guys are not accountable.

Accountability

And so as time went on, what would happen is that colonists would pass various laws, and the kings judges would strike them down, say you guys can’t do that.

Rick:

So if they strike down a law, there’s no recourse for it?

David:

There was no recourse for it. And that’s why they specifically made sure that once they got control of government, and the British were out of it, they stopped that. There’s no lifetime appointments, and Judges are accountable.

Rick:

You see, David, almost all of our people believe that there are lifetime appointments. I’ll go to a constitution class and I’ll ask, okay, how long are Judges appointed for? And I’m not kidding, 99%-100% of the people always will say, yes, they’re for lifetime. And that’s people coming out want to study.

David:

Sam Adams is from Massachusetts, he is a Founding Father of America, but he’s specifically out of Massachusetts. And Sam Adams helped do this book right here. That’s the Constitution in Massachusetts of 1780. So what happened was in 1776, they declared independence in America.

And then most of the states started writing their Constitution.

In 1776, Pennsylvania did. In 1776, North Carolina wrote their state constitution, so did Virginia. They started working on that in Massachusetts, but they didn’t get it written. And they worked and sent it back for revision. And so it’s really 1779 before they get it done, and it’s ratified, and it goes into effect in 1780. But Sam Adams has been working on this since the very beginning.

Now remember, his two things about the Judges as other Founding Fathers is you can’t have lifetime appointments, and these guys have to be accountable. So, when they wrote the Massachusetts Constitution, they addressed the issue of Judges, but they addressed the issue of government in general and it’s a whole different paradigm from what they had under the British form of government.

Rick:

This is after the Declaration. This is before the US Constitution.

David:

And by the way, those who are at the Constitutional Convention who did the federal constitution said they took ideas from state constitutions like that of Massachusetts. So here’s what it says in the Declaration of Rights right up front saying forth fundamental principles that are never to be violated. This is how they’ll operate their government.

Item number five, it says “All power residing originally in the people and being derived from the people, the several magistrates and officers of government vested with authority, whether they’re legislative, executive, or judicial are the people substitutes and agents and are all time accountable to the people.” Now, they made real sure that we weren’t going to have unaccountable Judges, they’re going to be accountable to the people.

Rick:

And specifically included judiciary saying they’re always…

David:

Judiciary right there, there was never a design to have Judges unaccountable to the people. But the other part is, well, how about lifetime appointments? What they did and what they also did in the federal Constitution, when you read it, it says that federal Judges are allowed to hold their appointments for the ‘duration of good behavior.’”

That’s not a lifetime appointment. That’s as long as you act right, you can stay there as a federal judge. But if you don’t act right, we’re going to take out.

Now significantly, the US Constitution has six clauses on how to remove Judges. There’s nothing else in the US Constitution that gets as much attention as those six clauses. That’s more content than any other subject to the Constitution gets to six clauses on how to remove Judges.

So if the Founding Fathers had these clauses and said, we’re going to make sure Judges are countable and that they don’t get lifetime appointments,

Why would they have thrown a Judge off the court?

Rick:

That’s why I was going to ask you, if it says for good behavior and then they have all these clauses for how to deal with bad behavior, what is not good behavior, I guess is the right way to ask?

David:

Well, the best way to know is go see the guys who wrote the clauses see what they defined as good behavior by who they throw off the court. There was a federal Judge thrown off the court because he cussed in the courtroom. Founding fathers threw him off the court.

Why’d they do that? Because the federal constitution says for the duration of good behavior, they said cussing in a courtroom is not good behavior for a judge; you’re gone.

Another guy was thrown off the court because he got drunk in his private life. Whoa, just private life, had nothing to do with his judge. No, it’s not good behavior for a Judge, you’re gone.

Another guy got thrown off the court because he contradicted an act of Congress. Supreme Court does that all time today. Congress fascinating we don’t like that, that’s unconstitutional. No, he did that, you’re gone, buddy.

Rick:

See our perception is that to do something like an impeachment, it has to be huge, it has to be a major, major deal.

Those are not major.

David:

Those are not major deals. See, there have been 97 impeachment investigations across history with Judges. You’ve had 13 impeachments actually taken off the court. And the more often you have an impeachment investigation, the less often you have to remove a Judge.

Because what happens, Thomas Jefferson said impeachment scarecrow. I mean, you sit out there in the middle field, and that’ll scare him off.

Rick:

Because all the other Judges are watching that going, I don’t want that to be me.

David:

For example, take the Judge in California that says, oh no having undergone the Pledge of Allegiance completely unconstitutional. What you do is you convene a hearing in Washington, DC, Congress says, hey, we want you to come appear before the Judiciary Committee, explain to us exactly what your thinking is that says we can’t acknowledge God when that’s in the Declaration and the Constitution.

What are you thinking? And other Judges see him getting called before Congress to be accountable and they go, oh, my gosh, we’re not going to touch that. Exactly.

Thomas Jefferson said, whatever branch is independent is absolute also. If we let the Judges be independent in that way, then we’re letting them be absolute. The Congress isn’t independent.

We hold them accountable in elections. President’s not independent, we got elections every four years. Judges are not independent,

Congress holds them accountable.

Rick:

So they are accountable through Congress to us? In other words, they’re accountable to us but Congress is the one that has to do their job and reining in the court?

David:

And see, that is the key thing with the courts is that the Constitution set it up so that the other branches could check the court. Now if the other branches refused to do that, then Judges do get lifetime appointments, and they are unaccountable if the other branches…

Rick:

Because we as individual citizens, you just can’t do…  

David:

That’s right. We have sent people to Congress and the presidency who don’t care what Judges do. And if that’s not an issue for us, it’s not an issue for our congressmen, it’s real simple.

Rick:

David, I think we’ve gotten an education on Judges already.

But let’s get another question about it.

Guest 2:

Did juries play a more important role in the judicial process of previous generations?

Rick:

Okay, well, maybe this will shift us a little from the Judge to the jury. What was the role of the jury in the past?

David:

You know, it’s an interesting thing about the juries because there is a long history, and it actually has a lot of biblical basis on the history. Now, 100 years ago, we call them Courts of Justice, because they existed to ensure that justice occurred. Then about 50 years ago, we went into what were called courts of Law.

We’re not after Judges, we’re after holding up the law here. The law is more important than justice is. And then the most recent thing is we’ve just become courts, nothing else.

And when you look at the definition of courts in the legal books today, it says a court as a place to settle disputes. Now, if you go back to when you had Courts of Justice, the biggest entity, the most important entity in a court of justice was the jury and the jury was more important than the Judge. And from the time of the Founding Fathers till about the 1890s, juries were inseparable from any trial.

Heroes of History

Hi, friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes we, parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read. And if you remember back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith Hall of Fame where they outline the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity in our faith as well.

I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called The Courageous Leaders collection. And this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers. And there’s a second collection called Heroes of History.

In this collection, you’ll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman; friends, the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at www.wallbuilders.com. That’s www.wallbuilders.com.

David:

A significant thing about jurists and the Founding Fathers said this right from the beginning, John Jay and James was all these guys who wrote the Constitution were on the Supreme Court, etc, they said that a jury is to examine both the law and the facts.

So Daniel, who the law says you can’t pray, he prayed anyway, he’s brought to trial in the American court, the jury listens to everything that’s gone on and they say, you know, you violated the law, but the law is an unjust law. You’re acquitted. You didn’t do anything wrong because you’re supposed to be able to pray according to the dictates of conscience.

Rick:

But if all they can review are the facts, then they have to say, well, yes, you prayed, and then the Judge gets to decide on the law.

But you’re saying the same way we used to do it if they can do both facts and law?

David:

The way they used to, juries are more important than the Judge. And quite frankly, what would happen is anytime the attorneys who argue about the points of law, they would never dismiss the jury, the jury is supposed to stay there and hear everything, every bit of evidence. Now, today, we will, oh, you can’t let the jury hear the evidence.

You can introduce this. You can’t do that. You know, back then they had to hear everything because the Judge would have said why Daniel, you violated the law.

You’re going to the lion’s den. You got to have a check and balance on the Judge and that was juries. 12 Jurors, 12 peers say, no way you’re going to throw him in the lion’s den for praying to God. And so it doesn’t matter how much education the Judge has, you get over here the check of the people and that’s the jury.

Rick:

We missed that today, I’ll tell you, the jury is really almost distain in…

David:

Well, see what happened is about 1890s, there in the 1890s, the Supreme Court came up with a new ruling says, hey, from now on, juries are not going to look at the law anymore, they’ll only look at facts. We, Judges, are the professionals. We’ll tell you what the Lawyers. Yeah.

Now at that point, your jury has become a lot more insignificant. So when an attorney says, hey, Judge, I think the law is wrong with that, okay, dismiss the jury, get them out of the room. Let’s talk about this back and forth. And then you bring the jury back, you don’t let them hear the law.

The Jury

And what happens is if the jury today does what juries did unto the Founding Fathers said, hey, that’s an unjust law, we’re not going to convict on that, then suddenly, the Judge says, oh, mistrial, I’m the one who does law, you guys don’t. You see, this is significant because in 1856, Congress passed the fugitive slave law, one of the most abominable laws in history.

It says, if you’re black and someone accuses you of having been a slave, even if you’ve been free your whole life, if I walk up and say, you used to be a slave, under that law, you instantly lost your constitutional right of habeas corpus, you lost your right to an attorney, constitutional right, you lost your constitutional rights simply because I said you used to be a slave. There was no due process. There was no examining. Nothing at all.

And so what happened is the law was so bad that the Federal law says if a black is accused of being a former slave, and it comes into court, and the Judge finds that he was not a former slave, the Judge gets paid five bucks. If the Judge finds that he was a former slave, the Judge get paid 10 bucks.

Rick:

So you’re incentivizing the Judge to always find…

David:

That’s right. So guess how many cases with Judges they found the black to be not a former slave? It’s like 1%.

But the jury consistently freed people under that, because they thought the law was unjust. You had Quakers, for example, that would help escaped slaves in the south and get to the north in the Underground Railroad, they would take the Quakers and put them on trial for violating the Fugitive Slave Law, and the jury would say, they didn’t do anything wrong, the law is bad. And so the jurists kept quoting all these people. And see, then the courts come in 1890 to say, oh, jurors, you got too much power, we need to limit your power.

The Geneva Bible

So they do that and at that point, jurors now become a lot less significant. And then we get to about 30-40 years ago, where we said, you know, we don’t need any juries aside, in fact, let’s just do it for the Judge. And if you don’t like the law, we’ll just strike it down for you, and we’ll settle the dispute.

Now, the problem with that is the use of juries is part of the due process clause of the Constitution, the fourth to eighth amendments. Here’s where it gets really fun. These three books, I’m going to pull right here, these are really big books, and these are old books too. This is from 1590.

This one also comes out of the 1500s. This happens to be the 1794 edition. But this is called the Geneva Bible. It was the Bible that preceded the King James Version of the Bible. This particular Geneva Bible that we’ve got right here is from 1590. This is brought to America but one of the Puritan pilgrim families.

But what makes the Geneva significant is that when you open the Geneva Bible up, on the inside, it is loaded with all these commentaries down the margins right there. You see all that? This is the writings of the Reformers back in the day when they said, hey, we’ve been away from the Bible for 1000 years, we get lousy traditions, time to get back to the Bible.

Rick:

So these are commentaries, taken in the scripture and actually applying and saying this is how we ought to be doing it in our culture?

David:

What they did was said, we’ve had the culture wrong for 1000 years, it’s time to go back to the Bible. So these are comments. One of the things they have tons of comments on this we’ve let the judicial system get away from what the Bible says.

Biblical Trials

And it went, there was trial of Jesus, there was trials of Paul, there were trials throughout the Bible and said, look at the policies you have with trials, look what God says about trials. And so these are all the comments here.

Well, part of the problem with trials was the king would head the established church, and the king would say what the doctrine was. And if you said, we disagree with that doctrine, the king would put you to death. In the case of Wycliffe and Tyndall and Hus, they were burned at the stake because they simply put the Bible down in a common language where people can read it. You have other people who were killed.

The pilgrims from persecuted because they didn’t attend the church service as a church the king told them go to. They had their own church. They had a home church. And the king says, you’re going to be fine every Sunday you don’t go to my church. So over and over, you have people being tried because of their religious belief in courts.

Now, the three courts in Britain that usually tried those guys were the Star Chamber Courts, the courts of the High Chancery and the Admiralty Courts. And in those courts, the Judge had everything and there was no other outside input. They would take testimony from people not sworn oath, they would take hearsay testimony, wouldn’t be direct testimony.

You were not allowed to have an attorney to defend you. You were forced to incriminate yourself often by torture. Rick, do you believe this? No, I believe that, drive a stake through your hands if you believe in now. And so after enough torture, you’d confess to it.

So all of this happens, and as a result, these reformers really criticize the English judicial system as violation of scriptures. That’s when King James came out with his Bible. Now we’re talking original King James here.

The KJV

This King James Bible comes out. And interestingly, it wipes out the commentaries. It doesn’t want anybody complaining about what’s going on. We’ve been doing this for 1000 years, let’s just keep doing it.

So you’ll find that there’s very little text differences in the King James from and you have the text differences deal with judicial areas. And the trial of Jesus and the trial of Paul and other trials, it didn’t read the same as Geneva Bible did, it reads different.

Now, the next thing that happens is these books right here, these books right here, these are really old. This came out in the 1500s. This is called Foxes Book of Martyrs. Okay. And it’s got here and it shows the first martyrs being Jesus Christ and the apostles and etc.

So it lists martyrs. It’s two volumes set listing all these martyrs that happen. And consistently through here, they show these guys were martyred because the bad judicial process. They were martyred because the right judicial process was not used in the courts. So this is what they have in Great Britain.

These three books here, when they come to America, they say, we’re not doing this: we’ve had bad courts. The fourth to the eighth amendments in the US Constitution, the due process clauses are all based on these three books right here.

Rick:

So the very reason they put those protections in our constitution it all comes from the knowledge they had of these things?

Who Stopped These Trials?

David:

Of these examples, the witch trial, we always hear about the witch trial, how terrible that was and 27 people put to death in the witch trial. And yeah, that’s terrible, 27 people put to death. But there’s something else about the witch trial we never talk about.

And that is three Christian ministers are the ones who got to stop. They went to Governor William Phips in Massachusetts, they said, Governor, look at the biblical rules of evidence to be used in courts of law. You’re not doing that.

Rick:

These were pastor.

David:

These are pastors: John Wise and Chris Mather and Thomas Brattle.

Rick:

Because when taught the story had them saying witch trial, the pastors are the bad guys.

David:

Pastors are bad guys. No. It was the government putting people to death. The pastor’s went to the governor and said, you got to stop this. Governor called Samuel Shula and said, look, we’ve been violating scriptures, we can do this. They call it into the trials. Shula got up in church and repented. The governor called for a day of fasting humiliation prayer seeking to avert God’s judgment. Pastors brought an end to it.

Now, the significant thing is you had 27 People put to death in the Massachusetts witch trials. Hey, there were witch trials going in Europe at the same time. 500,000 put to death over there. See, this is what government was doing.

It was the pastors who stepped in and…

…said, no, no, no, this is our heritage. We don’t want this kind of stuff going in the courts.

Rick:

So, wait, our guys, obviously were wrong for the 27, the pastors came in and corrected it because of…

David:

Well, the reason it wasn’t 500,000.

Rick:

And then you compare that to 500,000 who was never correct. They never got the jury system right. They never came back to any…

David:

Even US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who is on the court, he is not a Christian. He’s not a conservative, even he says the Due Process Clauses come out of the Bible, Due Process Clause of the Constitution. So when you look at the role of juries, juries were part of helping reach justice.

And by the way, in 1889 is and the court says, oh, by the way, we don’t need juries doing this anymore, we the judges will do it, you know, that’s the first time ever we had Courts of Appeal in the United States. We never need the Courts of Appeal because the people were the final word. If the jury gave a ruling that you were innocent of something, it didn’t go anywhere else, it stopped right there.

Political Agendas?

Rick:

I’ve already learned more in 30 minutes with you on the Judiciary than I did three years of law school. But let’s still try to get one more question.

Guest 3:

Shouldn’t our judges be neutral with no political agenda?

Rick:

So should the courts or the Judges, I guess, be influenced by the political process?

David:

Well, judges should be influenced by political process, because it is not their duty to make law, is it their duty to enforce the laws, interpret the laws, not to decide whether they would have done the law differently. Quite frankly, when you go back a few years ago, when all the stuff with war on terror was going and Congress went to Article I, Section VIII of the Constitution and says we’re given the authority to make all the regulations of land and sea forces, and for all the tribunals of those who are combatants against the US.

Civil Trials

And the court came up and said, we don’t like that, we think that they should be civil trials. And so the court went through and rewrote what Congress did, because the court didn’t like. It wasn’t a matter of constitutional or not, it’s a matter we got a different opinion on what the policy should be. Now…

Rick:

Gets back to what you said earlier in the program about it’s a place to settle disputes, they were settling that public disputes rather than like the Congress did.

David:

That’s not their role. Their role is not to settle disputes. Congress makes the laws. Ad if Congress quotes explicit constitutional language and do it there, and the court say oh, you don’t like that, we want a different policy.

No, no, that’s making the court a political body. They’re supposed to take their guidance from Congress, uphold that, enforce it. What the court is asked to do is, was the jury decided right? Was the law applied fairly? Not whether the law was up or down on good or bad.

And see that’s where the court has really gotten out of bounds and turn itself into a political entity. I point back to the 2010 election, the people of Iowa really made themselves very clear on this. And in Iowa, after 161 years of marriage, meaning one man and one woman by unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of Iowa said well, we think 161 years is wrong, we want something different.

And so the people stepped up and there were retention elections that year. And out of the seven Supreme Court Justices, three were up for retention election.

In other words, you can check in or out, you don’t get a choice.

Rick:

Don’t have opponent, but you can vote no, I don’t want this Judge to come back?

David:

That’s right. And I was interviewed a lot in that because I did several meetings in Iowa at the time and my outline was real simple. Hey, these Judges have just made themselves legislators.

They’re no longer Judges. They decided to create policy out of thin air. I recommend that you send those three guys home so they can run for the legislature because that’s evidently where they want to be.

Rick:

So that wasn’t politics influencing the Judge, that was the Judges influencing and making policies?

David:

Exactly. And that is wrong. That is absolutely wrong. They’re not to do that. The Federalist papers right here, the question came up with will Judges be able to make policy?

And this book right here, the greatest commentary ever on the Constitution written by guys who did the Constitution and guys on the first Supreme Court, they said, there’s not a syllable in the Constitution that authorizes the Judges to judge the spirit of the Constitution. No. No. They don’t have wit of authority to do that.

Demystifying the Judicial System – From Building On The American Heritage Series

And so when you have, like you do in so many states where you can elect Judges or retain them, the people didn’t do become the final authority. Judiciary, it’s not to be an independent branch of the people, no way, shape, fashion or form and they’re not to be the ones that shape politics.

You know, they had an election in Missouri where the people said, hey, we don’t want this tax increase, a Judge came and said yes, you do want this tax increase, even though you’ve voted down. And this is what your tax increase is going to be. Sorry, Article I, Section VIII of the Constitution says nobody can institute a tax increase except the House of Representatives, not even the Senate, nor the president can increase taxes, only the House. And yet this Judge said, but I want to increase the tax. I think there needs to be more money for education so we’re going to order a statewide tax on everyone.

You have case after case after case of Judge coming in making policy or not liking what the people decided or not liking what the Congress did. Not a matter of being unconstitutional, they call it unconstitutional because they don’t like it, but then they implement their own opinions. And that is never, ever, ever to occur. Right back to this Constitution, the people are in charge the government, they’re in charge of all three branches, they’re in charge of the Judges as well.

Rick:

Thanks for listening today, folks. Many of you have the DVD set of the American Heritage Series you can get the sequel, which is Building on the American Heritage Series, a lot of new materials and fantastic programs you want to have in your library. You can get it at our website today at wallbuilders.com.