

Although the standard mantra is that they were designed to be “co-equal” branches of government, that’s not what the Founders intended. The legislative branch is intended to be the supreme branch of government, since it and it alone has the authority to make laws.



The word “all” in the phrase “all legislative Powers” means all. As in every last little bit. According to the Founders’ Constitution, then, how much legislative power does the executive branch have? Zip. Zilch. Nada. It’s the job of the executive branch to implement laws, not to make them.

More to the point, how much legislative power does the judicial branch have, according to the Founders’ Constitution? Zip. Zilch. Nada. It has been given absolutely zero authority to make law, to change law, or to rewrite law. It is thus impossible, if we are governed by the Founders’ Constitution, for the Supreme Court ever to create “the law of the land” about anything whatsoever. A Supreme Court “opinion” (that’s what the Supreme Court itself calls them – not “rulings” or “laws” but “opinions”) cannot possibly under any faithful construction of the Constitution create law.

Is abortion “the law of the land?” Absolutely not. Is same-sex marriage “the law of the land?” Absolutely not. The Court was never, ever given that kind of power by the Founders’ Constitution.

So how did we reach the place where nobody knows what the “law of the land” is until the Supreme Court rules? How did we get to the place where we all must hold our breath and cross our fingers and hope the Court stumbles into the truth? How did the Court acquire so much blatantly unconstitutional and immoral power? The answer is easy: the Court stole it.


The root of this pernicious state of affairs goes all the way back to 1803 when Chief Justice John Marshall invented the concept of “judicial review” magically out of the ether. There is no place in the Constitution where the Supreme Court is given the authority to decide what the law is and to decide what laws are constitutional and which ones aren’t.

Two recent and glaring overreaches of the federal judiciary exemplify this twisted state of affairs. One is the ruling by a low-level, bottom-rung district judge in San Francisco setting aside the president’s completely lawful executive order suspending immigration from six jihadi-prone Muslim nations. This judge paralyzed the entire government of the United States with no constitutional warrant or justification and made us vulnerable to terrorism at the same time. And everybody let him do it. Then another federal judge in Hawaii did the same thing. And everybody let him get away with it, too.



The bottom line is that we no longer have even the pretense of three separate and co-equal branches of government. No, we have only one branch of government that counts, one branch of government that rules the other two branches with an iron fist. One branch of government which contemptuously allows the other two branches what limited freedom they see fit to grant. But when it comes to all-important decisions, federal judges have the unmitigated arrogance to think they get to decide every issue of significance for the rest of us – and we just have to lump it, no matter how outrageous their opinions are.

The only solution I see is for duly elected officials with constitutionally vested power to start ignoring these tyrannical judges. That’s not civil disobedience, it’s constitutional obedience. The judges are the ones engaging in civil disobedience by trashing the plain meaning of the law and the Constitution.


And if Attorney General Sessions simply refuses to issue Department of Justice grants to cities that harbor illegal alien felons, what could Judge Orrick do about it? Precisely nothing. He could huff and puff and threaten to blow Trump’s White House down, but it would be nothing but sound and fury signifying nothing.



Bryan Fischer hosts “Focal Point with Bryan Fischer” every weekday on AFR Talk (American Family Radio) from 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. (Central).



Copyright Reprinted with permission.

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