When the plain meaning of words no longer holds true, can you really have a rule of law?
Those are the questions I am asking myself after one of the Supreme Court’s rulings last week. In the much ballyhooed voting rights case of Moore v. Harper, the majority of the justices decided that the state legislatures did not have absolute power to determine the rules on how federal elections are conducted in the states. Instead, the Court provided the judicial branch of the state veto power over the legislature thereby overruling the the plain meaning of the words of the Constitution. Instead, the Court decided what the words meant thereby amending the Constitution with their opinion.
Don’t believe me? Well, you shouldn’t and always bring the receipts so you can decide for yourself.
Here are the words from Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution on the matter with respect to the election of members of congress:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of choosing Senators.
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.
As you can plainly see, the supreme law of our land, the U.S. Constitution, does not mention a state’s executive nor judicial branch when referencing elections. It plainly says ”by the Legislature thereof”.
Need more? Well, ok what about the election of the president? In a post at Zero Hedge, Mark Miele provides:
And as for presidential elections, the matter is even more cut and dried. Article 2, Section 1, declares, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”
Again, you can plainly see that there is no mention of the executive or judicial branches in these quotes directly from the text of the U.S. Constitution.
This was judicial activism in its purest sense and needs to be called out and stopped. How can this be stopped? Given we no longer are guided by moral men and women in the courts, executive or legislatives branches of our government, Mark Levin’s Liberty Amendments outlines what might be the only peaceful way to reign in the courts as well as the administrative agencies and put the power back into the people’s hands.
At the end of the day, if a law’s words do not mean what they say, and only a group of unelected judges determine how the law should be written, we no longer have rule of law and are much like Iran where their judges determine what the law is.