Court change will end legislating from bench
After decades of Supreme Court decisions affirming the premise of modern liberalism — “You’re too stupid for democracy” — there will now be more votes on the court in favor of letting us govern ourselves than there will be for “Let me tell you what to do.”
Talk about Making America Great Again …
For years conservatives have warned their liberal counterparts that any rights invented by five Supreme Court justices could one day be deconstructed by them, too.
Liberals, welcome to “one day.”
Assuming President Trump doesn’t fall into the Souter/Kennedy trap (“Gee, they seemed so conservative when I picked them … ”), America’s about to have a Supreme Court majority that rejects the past 50 years of “How can I fix it for you” for a court with the far superior approach of “Whaddaya bothering me for?”
Issues that had long been left to the legislature — aka “The will of the people” — like defining what a marriage is, or where the treatment of an unborn child crosses our collective moral values, were ripped from the democratic process as liberal courts denied millions of Americans that most basic of civil rights: the right to govern ourselves.
Now, having given this power to the nine unelected justices of the Supreme Court, the Left is terrified that policies they supported but could never pass through legislation might be in danger.
Guess what: They are. And they should be. In a democracy there’s no substitute for the legitimacy that comes from the will of the people. Roe v. Wade was decided 45 years ago but the issue of abortion is still unsettled.
America is almost equally divided on the issue of life today, and many Americans still view the court’s ruling as unjust. Why? Because instead of the messy process of self-government, we got a ruling from the robed mullahs, an edict from on high.
In his dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey — another abortion-case disaster — Antonin Scalia wrote that “by continuing the imposition of a rigid national rule (on abortion) instead of allowing for regional differences, the Court merely prolongs and intensifies the anguish.
“We should get out of this area, where we have no right to be, and where we do neither ourselves nor the country any good by remaining,” Scalia wrote.
The Supreme Court under Donald Trump is about to do a whole lot of good … by doing a whole lot less. It may not make Democrats happy, but it’s a big win for democracy.