The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It
By: Phyllis Schlafly

DL: What is the most serious issue facing our political system today?

PS: The increasingly activist judiciary is the most serious issue facing American democracy today. Activist judges have been legislating a liberal
agenda that opposes religious values, conventional morality, the Constitution, and even the right of American citizens to govern ourselves. Textbooks still say that we have three balanced branches of government-but textbooks are badly behind the times because one branch has assumed authority over the other two. Today, we are suffering from the oppressive rule of judicial supremacists who have replaced the rule of law with the rule of judges.

DL: How long have the courts been assuming legislative powers?

PS: This revolution in our system of government has happened stealthily and sporadically over the last fifty years, which is why most Americans don't realize it. During this time, the legal community has propagated two
colossal myths that Americans have come to regard as truth: (1) that the
Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court says it is, and (2) that court
rulings are "the law of the land." Our Constitution specifically defines
itself-not the opinion of judges-as "the supreme law of the land." Moreover, the Constitution does not authorize Supreme Court Justices to rewrite the Constitution under the pretense that they are interpreting it. Congress makes laws; judges do not.

DL: How did the founding fathers feel about the judicial branch?

PS: Our Constitution's Framers designed the judicial branch to be the least powerful of the three branches. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78 that the judiciary "will always be the least dangerous" branch of government because it has the least capacity to "annoy or injure" our constitutional rights. Thomas Jefferson warned Americans to be wary of "the despotism of an oligarchy" of judges who seek to become "the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions." They recognized the power of the judiciary and encouraged Americans to strictly monitor its scope.

DL: How did judicial supremacy begin?

PS: The infamous slave case, Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), is the first case in which the Supreme Court tried to expand its power over other branches of government. In that case, the Court tried to decide issues that were unnecessary to its decision-namely the lawfulness of slavery-and the Court ended up causing gross injustices. Neither the Supreme Court, nor any other court, federal, state, or local for that matter, has the constitutional authority to set public policy. Congress sets public policy by voting on laws. The courts simply decide whether those laws are constitutional.

DL: Do courts have the authority to change the definition of marriage?

PS: Absolutely not. The Goodridge v. Department of Public Health decision in Massachusetts is an outrageous example of activist judges asserting judicial supremacy. As one dissenting judge wrote, "The power to regulate marriage lies with the Legislature, not with the judiciary." The Massachusetts court's decision is steeped in animosity toward traditional moral standards and people who hold them sacred. The American people and our elected representatives have concluded that marriage is a moral good to be protected and encouraged. We cannot let judges change social policy and invent new law based on their own preferences and opinions.

DL: Do the courts apply foreign opinions in their decisions?

PS: Yes, rulings based on foreign sources have become more and more frequent. Six current Supreme Court justices have used foreign laws to justify their opinions when they could not find a basis for their views in U.S. law. Not only do these judges violate their oaths to the Constitution when they bypass it and apply foreign laws, but also they diminish the precious constitutional rights that Americans enjoy. Several judges have cited the European Union (EU) constitution in their opinions, but the fact is our great, long-lasting Constitution protects individual rights, while the EU
constitution does not. Most countries flatly reject American rights, such as
trial-by-jury. If we depend on foreign court decisions and documents to
examine uniquely American issues, we will lose our uniquely American rights.

Judges also inappropriately cite domestic opinions to justify their skewed
views. In the Goodridge case, a judge drew on the Massachusetts state Equal Rights Amendment as one authority for the decision to legalize same-sex marriages. But when Massachusetts voters adopted the state ERA in 1976, they did so with the understanding that it would have no effect upon the allowance or denial of homosexual marriages. That judge's partial reliance on the state ERA to legalize same-sex marriage is a travesty.

DL: Does the Constitution allow judges to decide how we may acknowledge God?

PS: Nothing in the Constitution confers on the federal courts the authority to decide how other entities of government may acknowledge God. Against the wishes of Congress, state legislatures, and the American people, unelected judges have been assaulting our right to acknowledge God. In no way does the Pledge of Allegiance violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and yet biased, activist judges have insisted that it does. They ban any acknowledgement of God from public life and from public schools in a malicious campaign to deny our heritage, keep our children ignorant of our history, change our culture, and censor our precious words.

DL: Is the decline of morality in the last fifty years associated with the
courts' decisions?

PS: Judicial supremacists are to blame for allowing a torrent of obscenity to engulf the movies, television, the theater, books, and even classroom
curricula. The Supreme Court's virulent judicial activism repeatedly and
aggressively defeats the people's attempt to maintain a decent society. Ever since the era of the Warren Court, the Supreme Court has recklessly applied the First Amendment to protect pornography and other assaults on decency. It uses the catch-all phrase, "social value" to elevate smut to a First Amendment right. All a smut-peddler has to do is insert a few literary or social passages, and his obscenity will be clothed with the Constitution. The justices are not interpreting the First Amendment; they are rewriting it to assure the profits of pornographers. We can't hope for any revival of civility and morality in the entertainment industry until Congress clips the power of the Imperial Judiciary to overturn legislative attempts to maintain decency.

DL: How can we stop judicial supremacy?

PS: Americans must reject the notion that judges' orders in particular cases are the law of the land that we must all obey. Private citizens must take an interest in court decisions, discuss them, comment on them, and ask television and radio talk shows to include them in their programming.
Ordinary Americans must require every candidate for Congress to commit to restoring self-government by legislating historical limits to the federal
judiciary's powers. We can terminate the rule of judges and restore
constitutional self-government, but we must act now. Congress should use its constitutional power granted in Article III to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts to hear any challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) or to the acknowledgment of God in the Pledge of Allegiance.

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