Dear friends and family of the preborn child,
Amy Coney Barrett arriving on the national scene has been like opening a window on a sunny fall day allowing fresh air to come in. Accompanied by her husband and 6 of her 7 children in that congressional hearing room, she became again the constitutional law professor (formerly such at Notre Dame Law School) and delivered a lesson to the entire country on our nation’s constitution that would have made Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (‘father’ of the Constitution) proud.
October’s Bright Blue Weather
Remember as a child when your teacher may have told you to bring to school two or three fall leaves of your choice? You would return home and pick up two or more colorful fall leaves – perhaps a bright yellow, an orange, a deep red or a dusty brown. Then back in school the next day, following the teacher’s example, remember putting a blank piece of paper over a leaf and rubbing a crayon back and forth to produce an ‘outline’ of the leaf and its stem, showing even the veins on the surface of the leaf?
In our adult world, there are two types of law: God’s Law and man’s law. God’s Law is written upon the human heart (our conscience recites it to us). The Holy Scripture further amplifies and explains it and answers the eternal questions that man is the only animal to ask:
Where do I come from? Why am I here?
Where am I going?
In order for laws to endure, they must live in the hearts of men. When placed over the template of God’s Law, man’s law must line up like the child’s leaf tracing in order for it to endure in the hearts of men. About such a law we say “It is ‘just’. It is ‘fair’.”
The Elephant in the room at Amy Coney Barrett’s Senate committee hearing was a law (case law) handed down by 7 unelected men (the vote in Roe v. Wade was 7 to 2) that has randomly executed 60 million preborn men and women of a nation presently totaling 328
million instead of the 388 million that would otherwise be the population of our country had it not been for Roe. The devil’s weapons are much more destructive than even man’s nuclear weapons.
The case law of a mere majority of an unelected court has proven thereby to be indigestible to the republic, because when placed over the template of the human heart (God’s Law found thereon) and the heart’s knowledge of the Commandment, Thou shalt Not Kill, it does not line up like the tracing of the child’s leaf.
Such case law as Roe v. Wade, while it has been ‘precedent’ for years, Amy Coney Barrett went on to explain, is not ‘superprecedent’ (a term in constitutional law for cases such as Brown v. Board of Education that outlawed school segregation) because she said “no cases have come along to challenge Brown” nor could she imagine there could be in the future.
Roe v. Wade on the other hand, she explained, while it is ‘precedent’, it is not ‘superprecedent’ for the reason that Roe is constantly being challenged in the courts. It is therefore subject to review and reversal by the Supreme Court (Brown v. Board of Education (not to have school segregation) reversed the former Plessy v. Ferguson (“separate but equal” schools).
In this government of, by and for the people, an ever increasing chorus of people, without using big legal words, put it more simply: Roe v. Wade is immoral and is a sin against God’s commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill.
When a child traces a leaf, he discovers the outline, the boundary of the leaf. In his coloring book, he learns to stay within the lines when he colors (within the boundary of the picture) and not to color ‘outside the lines’.
Amy Coney Barrett in that hearing room was teaching her children and at the same time the nation’s children that judges are not supposed to be allowed to color outside the lines (boundaries) of our nation’s Constitution (called in grown up lawyer words ‘textualism’ and “originalism”).
Fancy words but they mean the same thing. When you place a court’s decision over the template’ of the nation’s Constitution, if it fails to line up (like a leaf tracing) with the ‘boundaries’ of the Constitution (meaning if the court has colored outside the lines thereof) the court must be made to throw out its decision and start over. Without Amy Coney Barrett coming out and saying so, we are realizing that the Roe court colored outside the lines of the Constitution’s boundaries.
“Boundaries” are necessary for any established order. We are thankful that God established a boundary for the oceans of the world. We walk along the beach gathering sea shells with our children in safety despite the fact there is a lot of water out there in the ocean. “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed” (Job 38:11).
Among the several other cases that Amy Coney Barrett listed as examples of what are considered ‘superprecedent’ is Marbury v. Madison (decided in 1803). Had I been in her classroom at Notre Dame Law School after what I know now after 44 years of law practice (admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court since 1977, having filed numerous briefs in that court over the years), I would have respectfully raised my hand and stated that while I understand that Marbury v. Madison has been called in the past ‘superprecedent’ because it has survived since 1803 (Marbury v. Madison stands for the proposition that the Supreme Court “gets sole dibs” on the right to interpret the Constitution), the power that Chief Judge Marshall enunciated therein to INTERPRET THE CONSTITUTION has been increasingly abused by the court over the years. My question would have been why in her view had this overreaching power been allowed to go unchallenged?
Once you are allowed to interpret something you can change it to suit yourself. When we were teenagers just getting our driver’s license and asked to borrow the family car to go out on a date our parents may have said “Here are the key, but you are to be in by 11:00 pm sharp.” Come 10:30 pm we may have found ourselves at a party we hated to leave, so we chose to ‘interpret’ our parent’s curfew of 11:00 pm. We perhaps reasoned “they are primarily worried about my safety and I am off the road inside at this party.” So like Cinderella’s carriage turning into a pumpkin, we hung out at the party until the wee hours of the morning, giving no thought to the fact that our parents were worried sick about us thinking that perhaps we had been in an accident You can do the same thing with the Constitution once you start to interpret it. You can change it around to suit yourself or the politics of the Washington cocktail circuit whose adulation you seek.
My constitutional law book in law school pointed out that Marbury v. Madison should have been challenged long ago because it was challenged in the public forum by none other than Thomas Jefferson himself (president in 1803 when the case was decided).
Jefferson spoke out vociferously explaining that the ‘right to interpret the Constitution’ pulled out of thin air by Chief Judge Marshall (there is no such right conferred in the Constitution itself), would upset the balance of power (the checks and balances of the 3 branches – legislative, executive and judicial) by eventually leading to the judicial branch lording it over the other two branches of government.
Words of poetry come to mind that expresses this concept very simply: ‘Tis the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all.
Chief Judge John Marshall had colored ‘outside the lines’ so to speak – crossed the “Boundary” of the nation’s Constitution in order to have a case come out the way Marshall wanted it to and at the same time invented an unlimited power to “interpret” the Constitution (color outside the lines for the future).
Successive Supreme Court judges have gone off the paper (completely off the constitutional chart with their coloring). Can we blame them? Once you give a judge unbridled power, how can he be expected to voluntarily surrender that power? Justice Blackmun ‘put his spurs to the horse’ while grabbing the reins of power to interpret the Constitution in writing the majority opinion (and it was only a ‘human opinion’) in the Roe v. Wade case.
Such a question in a law school class would be a rhetorical question to ask the professor. But one would want to respectfully conclude by asking a direct question of Amy Coney Barrett: “Don’t you agree that a case challenged by none other than Thomas Jefferson, author of the nation’s Declaration of Independence and intimately knowledgeable of the nation’s Constitution constitutes a ‘continuing and ongoing’ challenge to the case of Marbury v. Madison such that it is improperly categorized as ‘superprecedent’ and may itself be challenged?” What should her answer be to the student’s question?
The time is long overdue to overturn Roe v. Wade, a clear example of a case that is ‘precedent’ but not ‘superprecedent’ (it is constantly being challenged and therefore not ‘superprecedent’) — in order to overturn Roe the court must first decide that the original Roe court ruled in error (colored outside the lines of the Constitution).
The Roe court did so by using the unlimited power to “interpret” the Constitution (originally given them by Chief Justice Marshall). The court colored outside the lines to draw an entirely new picture — a new leaf that does not exist on any tree — that is entirely outside the lines of Nature and Nature’s God.
And in order to conclude that the Roe court ruled in error you have to first challenge Marbury v. Madison that gave them the power to “interpret” the Constitution and so rule since if they possess unlimited power to interpret and add things to the
Constitution, the decision (Roe v. Wade) stands. In other words, Marbury v. Madison is the concrete foundation poured beneath the brick wall of Roe.
Jefferson was the first ‘textualist’ and ‘originalist’:
“The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States, at the time of its adoption.” (Thomas Jefferson; quoted in Thomas Jefferson (Salt Lake City, Utah: Freeman Institute, American Classic Series, 1981). p.65)
AMY CONEY BARRETT IS AN ORIGINALIST AND A TEXTUALIST AS WAS HER MENTOR JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA BEFORE HER AND ALL SUPREME COURT JUDGES SHOULD BE EVER AFTER. CONGRESS NEEDS TO PASS LAW TO MANDATE THAT OUR SUPREME COURT JUDGES GO BY THE EXACT WORDS OF THE CONSTITUTION (TEXTUALISM) AND ASCRIBE TO THOSE WORDS THE MEANING AT THE TIME THE CONSTITUTION WAS WRITTEN (ORIGINALISM).
Without realizing it, she is about to lead the court as its youngest member in overturning not just Roe v. Wade but Marbury v. Madison at the same time. BREATHTAKING!!
Roe v. Wade was only possible because the Supreme Court of 1973 had received the baton of “Constitutional Interpretation” from earlier incarnations of the court going all the way back to Chief Judge John Marshall’s Marbury v. Madison decision of 1803.
Wielding that baton of “interpretation” as if it were an emperor’s scepter, today’s Court rules supreme – and seeks to overrule God-given morality including the Commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill. The Court’s edict in Roe v. Wade has taught the mothers of our nation to violate that Commandment 60 million times. When will enough be enough?
It may be that the conservative judges on the court will be inspired by this new national star, Amy Coney Barrett, who dares to say that Roe is ‘precedent’ but not ‘superprecedent’. If, inspired by Amy, the present court overturns Roe just like Plessy v. Ferguson overturned Brown v. Board of Education, then and in that event, the court is implicitly deciding that the 1973 court was without interpretive power to rule as they did.
Amy Coney Barrett also said that Marbury is considered ‘superprecedent’ BECAUSE it has not been challenged in court, which brilliantly eases the minds of her senate confirmation foes (increasing the likelihood of her confirmation) while silently, subtly opening the nation’s thinking to the possibility that Marbury could be challenged under the right circumstances.
As stated above, if, treading carefully (since a court with power is reluctant to give up that power), the conservative wing of the court leads their colleagues in overturning Roe just like Plessy v. Ferguson overturned Brown v. Board of Education, the court would be implicitly deciding that the 1973 court was without interpretive power.
If what is implicit would then be made explicit through the court’s opinion in this matter or perhaps other challenges to Marbury, then the flaw in Marbury will be exposed. All will see that the ‘Emperor has no clothes’. It would pull the rug out from under the doctrine of “interpretive power” which in turn would pull the emperor’s scepter out of the Court’s hands.
You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all the people all the time.
The liberal media tried to have their way with the 2016 presidential election. They failed. The liberal media is trying to have their way again in 2020. But the people have their own media: the internet. The silent majority that is plugged into the internet will not be fooled. President Trump, the most pro-life president ever, will be re-elected!
Yes, the left will want to start impeachment proceedings the next day because they are sore losers, but they will be too exhausted to do so.
They called Ronald Reagan’s presidency the ‘telflon presidency’ because his detractors could not get anything to stick. Donald Trump’s presidency is similarly a teflon presidency.
We thank God for our nation’s most pro-life president ever! Keep President Trump and Vice President Pence in your prayers.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
R. Martin Palmer
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