London sun edwin meese gun2/29/2024 ![]() The judicial process is, at its most fundamental level, a political process. The Court is what it was understood to be when the Constitution was framed-a political body. Nothing less would serve to perpetuate the sanctity of the rule of law so effectively.īut that is not to suggest that the justices are a body of Platonic guardians. ![]() For the Supreme Court is the only national institution that daily grapples with the most fundamental political questions-and defends them with written expositions. The moral force in which tribunals are clothed makes the use of physical force infinitely rarer, for in most cases it takes its place and when finally physical force is required, its power is doubled by his moral authority.īy fulfilling its proper function, the Supreme Court contributes both to institutional checks and balances and to the moral undergirding of the entire constitutional edifice. It is something astonishing what authority is accorded to the intervention of a court of justice by the general opinion of mankind. The great object of justice is to substitute the idea of right for that of violence, to put intermediaries between the government and the use of its physical force. In many ways the Court remains the primary moral force in American politics. There are but two ways: either by physical force or by moral force. The problem of any popular government, of course, is seeing to it that the people obey the laws. As Madison put it, the Constitution enabled the government to control the governed, but also obliged it to control itself.īut even beyond the institutional role, the Court serves the American republic in yet another, more subtle way. The purpose of the Constitution, after all, was the creation of limited but also energetic government, institutions with the power to govern, but also with structures to keep the power in check. Hamilton, like his colleague Madison, knew that all political power is "of an encroaching nature." In order to keep the powers created by the Constitution within the boundaries marked out by the Constitution, an independent-but constitutionally bound-judiciary was essential. An independent judiciary under the Constitution, he said, would prove to be the "citadel of public justice and the public security." Courts were "peculiarly essential in a limited constitution." Without them, there would be no security against "the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body," no protection against "unjust and partial" laws. That prompted Hamilton to write his classic defense of judicial power in The Federalist, No. The Anti-Federalist Brutus took him to task in the New York press for what the critics of the Constitution considered his naiveté. Ever the consummate lawyer, Hamilton pointed out that "laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning." You will recall that Alexander Hamilton, defending the federal courts to be created by the new Constitution, remarked that the want of a judicial power under the Articles of Confederation had been the crowning defect of that first effort at a national constitution. The text of the document and the original intention of those who framed it would be the judicial standard in giving effect to the Constitution. As the "faithful guardians of the Constitution," the judges were expected to resist any political effort to depart from the literal provisions of the Constitution. The intended role of the judiciary generally and the Supreme Court in particular was to serve as the "bulwarks of a limited constitution." The judges, the Founders believed, would not fail to regard the Constitution as "fundamental law" and would "regulate their decisions" by it. In reviewing a term of the Court, it is important to take a moment and reflect upon the proper role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system. The law matters here and the business of our highest court-the subject of my remarks today-is crucially important to our political order. Lawyers and laymen alike regard the Court not so much with awe as with a healthy respect. ![]() Perhaps nothing underscores Paine's assessment quite as much as the eager anticipation with which Americans await the conclusion of the term of the Supreme Court. Thomas Paine was right: "America has no monarch: Here the law is king." We Americans, after all, rightly pride ourselves on having produced the greatest political wonder of the world-a government of laws and not of men. It is, of course, entirely fitting that we lawyers gather here in this home of our government. ? Attorney General Edwin Meese III Before the American Bar Association
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