The Supreme Court has only law to consider; therefore, it is not the prerogative of the court to decide on issues of moral justice.  But its liberal jurists, who presumably have been informed of America's founding purpose, speak in an artificial language, freighting old words with new definitions that have sufficed to render morality a product of law.  Can the term "vaccination," for instance, be expanded to mean "forced sterilization"?  Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said it could, at a time when progressive elites were promoting eugenics as a proper science (Buck v. Bell, 1927), and seven of the remaining justices agreed with him.

The modern Court, guided as much by anomalous precedent as by settled law, enters a region of pragmatic relativism, knowing its decisions, while resolving certain legal issues, will bring whole categories of perplexity and harm to millions of good people, to their beliefs and ways of life and to the wide and common understanding of justice.  How, then, are these jurists, selected by partisan privilege, comfortable with a system of justice so arbitrary and so divided by doctrinaire prejudices?  What are they thinking as they watch the consequences of their decisions disturb and ripple through society along ideological lines of force?  Does the Court in any way serve a didactic function if its understanding of justice sways in sympathy with the emergence of new currents of popular opinion?

The Supreme Court of the United States is an imperfect, irresistible, and unappealable instrument of coercion, and many of its decisions have endured as first causes of civil strife in American society.  What business is it of the court to shut down a truly democratic debate by the people on issues affecting their long-established customs, formal education, or religious beliefs?  The court cannot create a right where no assumption of a right existed in the Constitution – in other words, the court cannot issue decrees.  But an activist court has no difficulty in interfering with the protected rights of all persons – through opinions effecting decrees – if the ends favor immediate social reforms or special preferences in law for targeted constituencies.

There is much need for reparation.  New laws create new crimes.  But there are too many laws now that hunt down honest citizens – so many laws, in fact, that no one shall escape censure.  If the American people do not have standing against a hostile administration corrupted by the prejudices of ideology and political self-interest, then there is no such virtue as justice – for America is the injured party.  Every social and moral issue has now become a federal question to be decided by the courts.

Justice breaks upon self-interested government.  After many years of activist deconstruction within the court system, words no longer bind meaning into law.  We ask only that the Supreme Court of the United States interpret the new laws reasonably, not willfully, but we have discovered in a chain of recent rulings that it is unnecessary for the legislature to write laws in plain and consistent language, for the court, under Chief Justice Roberts, is no longer compelled to discover the purpose of a statute in its language.  Rather, it needs only find it in "legislative intent" in order to affirm the law.  This specious form of reasoning assures that the court cannot regard any law as unconstitutional based on the ambiguity or internal contradictions of its terms.  If the law is "too big to fail," this court will go to any extreme to save it, even if it means revising the law or redefining its terms.

The discovery of volition in the court's opinions – that of deciding for the "greater good" dictated entirely by ideological preferences – establishes a precedent in jurisprudence that is more than dangerous; it virtually assures the dissolution of the Constitution's separation of powers should the liberal ever gain control of all three branches of our government.  The court is understandably reluctant to engage in disputes between the legislative and executive branches, but if the Court cannot re-establish the separation of powers, then it leaves the center of government open to a species of despotism that may effectively eliminate judicial review from all legislative and executive activity.

The Supreme Court, standing always upon the limit of democratic debate concerning the laws, has certainly brought discredit upon itself, often in attempting to bend moral principles over a new social template.  Due to the pervading inducements of judicial activism, to which a certain few jurors suffer no immunity whatsoever, the logic that carries a majority opinion may proceed along fault lines long abandoned by common sense but reinforced by ideological preferences.  When this happens, and the dissent is hotter than fire, the court acts merely as a political instrument.  To an activist juror, for whom all justice is "social justice," there can be no successful argument against the State's central authority.  Activism, in the guise of a jurist, in whose opinions lie the guide to State actions, may find greater legitimacy in a restraint on the preservation of individual rights than in any limit to the arbitrary force of government.  Moral questions thereafter simply devolve into legal or political ones.

The Constitution protects the rights of individual sovereignty, but the modern courts, under progressive influence, give large groups of targeted populations special rights and privileges that individuals do not have.  This deliberate action sets these groups apart from the Constitution and above the individual under the new liberal interpretation of justice.  By giving groups power over the individual, through affirmative action, eminent domain, class shelter, preferential treatment, or through any number of newly discovered "civil rights," the liberal undermines the democratic process even as he proclaims his love of democracy itself.  And so destructive of individual sovereignty are progressive interests that the Supreme Court will no longer deem appropriate the constitutional protections due to a person whose principles, acquired beliefs, or just pursuits oppose those interests.  Any individual, although right by conscience and settled law, must now prepare his soul for censure when standing alone before the Court of Social Justice.

The Constitution binds the government to its text.  Cancel but a word, and America is forever changed.  Although the Supreme Court cannot issue decrees, recent opinions are clearly made of that deplorable substance.  Words commonly used do not necessarily have common meanings in the dialect of law.  The court, at its discretion, may redefine terms.  What words and what actions, then, may not the court legitimize with new meanings?

If the progressive can redefine "human life" in his dictionary, then the court may turn any word to fit a new social justice need.  And in a recent bitterly divided opinion regarding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), the court had no difficulty in forcing millions of Americans to purchase health insurance who do not want it or to require them to pay a penalty to the IRS.  In other words, the liberal court can no longer define "fairness" without "force."

From this pattern of reasoning, what new "rights" may not the Court scribes further discover in the shadows of language and precedent?  The jurist waits only for the need.  And how is America not changed by the language of law?

Anyone wishing to agree or disagree with the author, to discuss, suggest or censure, may contact him at his email address: phahl@icloud.com.