By John W. Whitehead ——Bio and Archives--February 16, 2016
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"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."--Dietrich BonhoefferThe untimely death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has predictably created a political firestorm.
"The Court has become worryingly cloistered, even for a famously cloistered institution… today's justices filter out anything that might challenge their perspectives. Antonin Scalia won't read newspapers that conflict with his views and claims to often get very little from amicus briefs. John Roberts has said that he doesn't believe that most law-review articles--where legal scholars advance new thinking on contemporary problems--are relevant to the justices' work. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Scalia's opera-going buddy, increasingly seems to revel in, rather than downplay, her status as a liberal icon. Kennedy spends recesses guest-teaching law school courses in Salzburg."Are you getting the picture yet? The members of the Supreme Court are part of a ruling aristocracy composed of men and women who primarily come from privileged backgrounds and who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. These justices, all of whom are millionaires in their own rights, circulate among an elite, privileged class of individuals, attending exclusive events at private resorts orchestrated by billionaire oil barons, traveling on the private jets of billionaires, and delivering paid speeches in far-flung locales such as Berlin, London and Zurich. When you're cocooned within the rarefied, elitist circles in which most of the judiciary operate, it can be difficult to see the humanity behind the facts of a case, let alone identify with the terror and uncertainty that most people feel when heavily armed government agents invade their homes, or subject them to a virtual strip search, or taser them into submission. If you've never had to worry about police erroneously crashing through your door in the dead of night, then it might not be a hardship to rule as the Court did in Kentucky v. King that police should have greater leeway to break into homes or apartments without a warrant. If you have no fear of ever being strip searched yourself, it would be easy to suggest as the Court did in Florence v. Burlington that it's more important to make life easier for overworked jail officials than protect Americans from debasing strip searches. And if you have never had to submit to anyone else's authority--especially a militarized police officer with no knowledge of the Constitution's prohibitions against excessive force, warrantless searches and illegal seizures, then you would understandably give police the benefit of the doubt as the Court did in Brooks v. City of Seattle, when they let stand a ruling that police officers who had clearly used excessive force when they repeatedly tasered a pregnant woman during a routine traffic stop were granted immunity from prosecution. Likewise, if you're not able to understand what it's like to be one of the "little guys," afraid to lose your home because some local government wants to commandeer it and sell it to a larger developer for profit, it would be relatively easy to rule, as the Supreme Court did in Kelo v. New London, that the government is within its right to do so. Now do you understand why the Supreme Court's decisions in recent years, which have run the gamut from suppressing free speech activities and justifying suspicionless strip searches to warrantless home invasions and conferring constitutional rights on corporations, while denying them to citizens, have been characterized most often by an abject deference to government authority, military and corporate interests? They no longer work for us. They no longer represent us. They can no longer relate to our suffering. In the same way that the Legislative Branch, having been co-opted by lobbyists, special interests, and the corporate elite, has ceased to function as a vital check on abuses by the other two branches of government, the Judicial Branch has also become part of the same self-serving bureaucracy. Sound judgment, compassion and justice have taken a back seat to legalism, statism and elitism. Preserving the rights of the people has been deprioritized and made to play second fiddle to both governmental and corporate interests. In the case of the People vs. the Police State, the ruling is 9-0 against us. So where does that leave us? The Supreme Court of old is gone, if not for good then at least for now. It will be a long time before we have another court such as the Warren Court (1953-1969), when Earl Warren served alongside such luminaries as William J. Brennan, Jr., William O. Douglas, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter and Thurgood Marshall. The Warren Court handed down rulings that were instrumental in shoring up critical legal safeguards against government abuse and discrimination. Without the Warren Court, there would be no Miranda warnings, no desegregation of the schools and no civil rights protections for indigents. Yet more than any single ruling, what Warren and his colleagues did best was embody what the Supreme Court should always be--an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. That is no longer the case. We can no longer depend on the federal courts to protect us against the government. They are the government. Yet as is the case with most things, the solution is far simpler and at the same time more complicated than space allows, but it starts with local action--local change--and local justice. If you want a revolution, start small, in your own backyard, and the impact will trickle up. If you don't like the way justice is being meted out in America, then start demanding justice in your own hometown, before your local judges. Serve on juries, nullify laws that are egregious, picket in front of the courthouse, vote out judges (and prosecutors) who aren't practicing what the Constitution preaches, encourage your local newspapers to report on cases happening in your town, educate yourself about your rights, and make sure your local judges understand that they work for you and are not to be extensions of the police, prosecutors and politicians. This is the only way we will ever have any hope of pushing back against the police state.
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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book The Freedom Wars (TRI Press) is available online at amazon.com. The Rutherford Institute is available at rutherford.org