A Phony Crisis
Over the last week, one of the legacy media’s chief talking points is that the Trump administration is precipitating a “constitutional crisis” by, among other things, criticizing federal judges. It’s ok to criticize judges. Just ask Justice Elena Kagan, who says we should criticize the Supreme Court if we don’t like their decisions. Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson have not hesitated to harshly criticize the Court’s conservative majority in speeches and interviews. There is a long history of elected officials criticizing judges, and that shouldn’t surprise us, because judges and elected officials are all part of the unending struggle for political power to bend the state apparatus to the will of the party that won the last round.
Democrats have been lambasting the Supreme Court for years without concern about the separation of powers or fear of fomenting a constitutional crisis. Joe Biden urged sweeping constitutional changes to mandate term limits for Supreme Court Justices, whose decisions he characterized as “extreme opinions,” and a “code of ethics” to give their opponents opportunities to force them off decisions or impeach them. Democrats, now parading as defenders of the separation of powers, have demanded they obtain a such a code to give them leverage over Justices who stray from their preferred interpretations of law. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer threatened Justices by name in front of the Supreme Court building during oral arguments. When Justices don’t follow the Democratic Party line, Democrats denounce them as “extreme” and “far-right,” forgetting the tender place in their hearts for the separation of powers.
Presidents criticizing the courts and even questioning their authority is nothing new. In fact, it has happened repeatedly throughout American history. In Marbury v. Madison (1803), the case that established the principle of judicial review, Secretary of State James Madison refused to present his case to the Court, being convinced that the Supreme Court lacked the authority to make him deliver a commission to
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
