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Book Review

Rein n out-of-control Supremes, says Schafly

By Diane Levero

Most pro-lifers are very aware of the enormous evil dealt to American society when the Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, declared a “right” to abortion found nowhere in the Constitution.

Many are also cognizant that the Court continued to further legitimize abortion “rights” in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and Stenberg v. Carhart (2000).

Because of these decisions, pro-lifers are in the forefront of efforts to see that future appointees to the Supreme Court will be conservative.

But in The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, author Phyllis Schlafly helps pro-life readers step back from their own particular concerns over Supreme Court misbehavior to grasp the big picture.

The problem is not just that we currently happen to have too many liberal judges on the Court who are voting the way we don’t like:  the problem is that we have allowed a completely false concept of the Supreme Court’s role and power to become accepted dogma.

In brief, for the past fifty years, unelected federal judges have taken on the role of legislators, a role that properly belongs to our elected representatives in Congress – and Congress and the American people have let them do it.

The courts’ dominance over Congress has existed for so long – for generations, in fact – that it has taken on the aura of settled fact.

Anyone who questions the supremacy of the courts’ authority is shouted down as being against the rule of law – when in fact, the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, is ignored and flouted by Supreme Court justices who rule based on their own opinions and preferences.

Schafly explains that activist Supreme Court justices have justified their power grabs by expanding the Due Process Clause in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to create new “substantive rights” not mentioned in the Constitution.

“Substantive due process has become the fundamental legal theory upon which the judicial activists depend for decisions that have no basis in the Constitution, and it has been cited in more than one hundred Supreme Court decisions since Roe v. Wade in 1973,” she points out.

Schafly shows the enormity of the havoc wreaked on our national fabric by the Supreme Court and lower courts by tracing rulings over the past half-century in a number of areas.

Most readers will be familiar with some of these areas and the related court cases:  the expunging of prayer in public schools, and the further banning of acknowledgement of God in public places, for example.

Other spheres of court malfeasance may be less familiar.  One is the undermining of our national sovereignty by Supreme Court justices who cite foreign laws, rather than the U.S. Constitution, as the basis for decisions.

In the area of pornography, Schafly outlines the stunningly thorough job that the Supreme Court did in destroying the ability of communities to maintain public decency.

From 1966 to 1970 the Court, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, handed down a series of 34 decisions that reversed lower court convictions on obscenity and made laws against pornography almost impossible to enforce.

As a result, notes Schlafly, a “torrent of obscenity” has engulfed movies, TV, the theater, books and even classroom curricula.

What can be done to stop an out-of-control judiciary?  Schafly emphasizes that any effort to do so must come from the bottom up:  grassroots Americans must demand that Congress do its duty.

She offers ten steps to terminate the rule of judges and restore constitutional self-government:

1. The Senate must reform its rules so liberals can’t continue to defeat constitutionalist nominees by preventing an up-or-down vote.
2. Congress can and must limit the jurisdiction of federal courts; i.e., constitutionally, it can limit the types of cases the Supreme Court may hear.
3. Congress should prohibit federal courts from relying on foreign laws or court decisions.
4. Congress should remove the power of a single federal judge to nullify an initiative passed by voters in a statewide referendum.
5. Congress should prohibit federal courts from ordering any governmental entity to raise taxes under any circumstances.
6. Congress should require a two-thirds majority of the Supreme Court to declare a law passed by Congress unconstitutional.
7. Making rulings that have no basis in the Constitution should be grounds for impeachment.
8. Congress should prohibit federal judges from trying to micromanage public schools, prisons, or mental hospitals.
9. Congress should end the “racket” of the collection of attorney’s fees by special interest organizations such as the ACLU that litigate against the acknowledgement of God or traditional marriage.
10. The Senate and House Judiciary Committees should hold extensive hearings on various proposals to stop the usurpation of power by federal courts.

Concludes Schafly:  “The American people must demand that Congress use its full constitutional powers to protect America from judicial usurpation, because the federal courts pose the number-one threat to our democratic process.”

The Supremacists is not light reading -- but pro-lifers will find that it sheds valuable light on why we are the mercy of the Supreme Court and what we can do about it.