Collins Report

By Bruce Karlson

Judicial tyranny is voluntary as Congress has the authority to end it.
Judicial tyranny began with an obscure case in 1803. A supine Congress accepted the Court’s ruling in Marbury v. Madison in 1803 which nullified a law in making its ruling. Congressional acquiescence allowed the genie of judicial rule by decree to be released. To better understand the significance of this ruling, we should examine the thoughts of the Founders.

Congress clearly has the power to overturn decisions by the “robes” but declines to use it.
The issue of judicial poaching was of concern, and is addressed in the Constitution’s Article III, Section 2, “In all other cases before mentioned the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction both as to law and to fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.”

Further:

In The Federalist #47, James Madison opined, “No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value….than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all power, legislative, executive or judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, ….may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Madison clearly feared the aggregation of power in any branch.
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Judge William Johnson in 1823: “The case of Marbury and Madison is continually cited by bench and bar as if it were settled law,…But the Chief Justice says, “there must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere. True, there must be, but…the ultimate arbiter is the people.”

Federalist #51, paragraph #4, Hamilton or Madison, “But the great security against the gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist the encroachments of the others.

The Constitutional language in Article III Section 2 above is buttressed by the words of warning of the document’s creators. The concern was not an afterthought.
This discussion will continue next Sunday.

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