Senator Peter Welch, a Democrat Senator from Vermont, recently said in a confirmation hearing on Kash Patel, President Trump’s nominee for FBI Director, that our judiciary is the final arbiter of all constitutional questions, which is exactly what Thomas Jefferson predicted would one day turn our judiciary into a despotic oligarchy and our judges into judicial despots. Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, whose interpretation of our laws and Constitution, is almost always the polar opposite of conservative Supreme Court Justices, like Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, recently said that all court orders are obligatory and ongoing. In other words, everyone must obey what judges say, because the law is whatever judges say it is and our Constitution says whatever today's judges interpret it to say, regardless of what our Founding Fathers intended for it to say. When you add to all of this the frightening scenario now appearing before our very eyes, of rogue judges all across America usurping the executive powers of the presidency and seizing the reins of government from the hands of our duly elected president, you quickly begin to see a constitutional crisis mounting to mammoth proportions. The question is: “Will we continue to be a country governed by laws, or will we soon become a country governed by lawyers; that is, by judges who mistake their gavels for scepters, their benches for thrones, and their black robes for regal ones?

Perhaps, a little history lesson will help you understand how we got to the precipice of this constitutional crisis, which is now threatening the future existence of our representative republic. In the Federalist Papers, which were written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, to promote the ratification of our Constitution, Hamilton wrote that the judiciary should be the “least dangerous” branch of our government, since it possesses neither the “sword” (military power) or the “purse” (control of money). Armed only with the power of judgment⏤the ability to interpret the law⏤not with force⏤the ability to enforce laws⏤nor will⏤the ability to pass laws⏤the judiciary should not be feared, as many feared at the time, of ever becoming a despotic branch of government. 

More than forty years after the writing of the Federalist Papers, President Andrew Jackson, Ole Hickory, balked at and refused to buckle under to what he perceived to be an unjust Supreme Court decision. In his protest of it, Jackson said, “John Marshall [the Chief Justice at the time] has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” Although we’re told today that the failure of a president to abide by any court ruling, no matter how egregious or outlandish, would create an instantaneous constitutional crisis, there was no constitutional crisis created by President Andrew Jackson turning his nose up at Chief Justice John Marshall, because everyone understood in Jackson and Marshall’s day, what hardly anyone understands in our day; namely, that our laws are enacted by the legislative branch of our government, enforced by the executive branch of our government, and only interpreted by the judicial branch of our government. Jackson simply did what he, as the head of the executive branch of our government, had the power to do; he rendered an unjust judicial decision moot by refusing to either abide by it or enforce it.

Unfortunately, John Marshall did not take being put in his place by Andrew Jackson lying down. Instead, in response to General Jackson’s refusal to accept Marshall’s Supreme Court ruling as presidential marching orders, Marshall did an end run around the presidency⏤the executive branch of government⏤as well as Congress⏤the legislative branch of government. Marshall did so by vesting the Supreme Court with the power of judicial review; that is, with the ability to nullify the legislative branch’s enacted laws and the executive branch's power to enforce laws, whenever the Court interprets a law of the legislature or an act of the president as unconstitutional. In essence, Marshal effectively armed a potentially tyrannical judiciary with both the sword and the purse, by seizing them both from the hands of presidents and legislators, in order to put them both in the hands of judges.

We are seeing the nightmare that Thomas Jefferson foresaw and that John Marshall dreamed up unfolding before our eyes in modern-day America. A single judge, armed with nothing more than his or her prejudiced personal opinion, can now usurp the power of the purse⏤take control of government spending⏤as well as the power of the sword⏤take control of the executive powers of the presidency. Of course, this is all contingent upon the continuing willingness of the president, the people, and the people’s representatives to voluntarily bow down before the bench of some little pipsqueak judicial despot. 

It was the late Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia who warned the Supreme Court that it hung by the thin thread of public confidence, and that the forfeiture of that confidence over unconstitutional rulings would result in the Court’s flimsy foundation quickly crumbling beneath it. Unlike Andrew Jackson, Donald Trump said yesterday in the Oval Office that he would abide by all court rulings. If you ask me, its time the courts were put back in their place, judicial despots were ignored and impeached, and we the American people came out from under the iron fisted rule of out of control gavel swingers. If we would, we would learn, as Andrew Jackson taught us long ago, that pipsqueak judicial despots are buck-naked beneath their black robes, since they possess neither the sword nor the purse, but only, in most cases, nothing more than their personal prejudiced opinions, by which no American should ever be willing to be ruled.