From the December 2000 Idaho Observer:

Judicial Anarchy -- Part I

By Hari Heath

As Thomas Jefferson said to Spencer Roane, in 1821, “The great object of my fear is the Federal Judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting with noiseless foot and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.”

Colonel Dan said more recently in his article, The Swords of American Patriots ( http://www.sierratimes.com/archive/dan/edcd112400.htm), “When those that are solemnly charged with upholding the law ignore the law; then there is no law; there is only lawlessness.”

Today, we find ourselves and our nation in a state of judicial anarchy. Originally entrusted to interpret our laws and maintain access to courts of justice, the judiciary has evolved into a creature of not so subtle lawlessness. It has not been a sudden event. Slowly, step by step, we have been conditioned to the changes made by the judicial governing power. What would have been an outrage a century ago, like taking children away from their parents and giving them to the custody of a government agency, or seizing someone's home and property because of a weed found growing there, or compelling the use of seat belts in your own private carriage, has now become the norm. The seeds of judicial anarchy were sown long ago and have prospered by our failure to weed the garden of government:

“At the establishment of our Constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions nevertheless become law by precedent, sapping by little and little the foundations of the Constitution and working its change by construction before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life if secured against all liability to account.”

~Thomas Jefferson to A. Coray, 1823

Years ago, public service was just that. Now the relationship between master and servant has been reversed and we the people serve our new masters with taxes and tribute. “All rise,” as “your Honor” proceeds to the bench for another session of pillage and plunder. Caught in the web of pretended offenses where, all too often, no one but the “defendant” has been offended, the judicial officer lays a claim of jurisdiction to determine who gets what's left of our lives and fortunes. Constitutional provisions securing our rights be damned or ignored by the judicial hordes, we are treated by the judiciary as mere property, whose rights exist only by the permission of government, subject to judicial discretion. Time after time, Americans who still believe they have rights antecedent to government have challenged the tyrannical corruption of the third branch only to find themselves beaten down by a judicial officer, who willingly departs from the government laid down by the Constitution and embraces a new regime. How has this happened? Once a third component of the fabric of our Republic, the judiciary has now evolved to become legislators and administrators who have isolated themselves from the other branches of government and granted themselves immunity with impunity. In decision after decision, the judiciary has written not just volumes, but libraries, full of doctrines to command every aspect of our lives and their own protection. With their doctrines and rules, they have established law after law, with no need for a legislature.

Thomas Jefferson explained it well in 1807: “The original error [was in] establishing a judiciary independent of the nation, and which, from the citadel of the law, can turn its guns on those they were meant to defend, and control and fashion their proceedings to its own will.” The constitutions command that the lesser courts be established by the legislatures or the Congress, thus keeping a check and balance between the powers of the three branches of government. Article I, Section 8, clause 9 of the federal Constitution grants Congress the power to “constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court” and Article 3, Section 1 vests the judicial power “in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

No longer ordained and established by the Congress, our lower courts have become the province of the Supreme Courts. With this in house control, the judiciary administers these courts through “rules” recommended by committees of lawyers and “adopted” by the state and federal Supreme Courts.

Tyranny Defined?

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether on one, a few or many and whether hereditary, self appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” -- James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 47

By managing the monopoly of the Bar associations, they control the attorneys who bring the cases and questions before them. By creating the rules of court they control the proceedings before them. By controlling the evidence and the testimony they control the facts. With a broad and unfettered “discretion” they determine just what the law is. By controlling the jury they control the verdict. By controlling the question and the questioners, they control the answer.

And in the wake of this judicial tyranny imposed by the black robes behind the bench, gathering power unto themselves, we now face the prospect of a judicial act which will determine the next president.

Obstruction of Justice?

Law should be a simple thing designed first and foremost for the people themselves. It could and should be a system that is comprehensible and usable by the average person. Law should be clear and predictable, something one can rely on.

As it is now, the system is so complex and contradictory, that many lawyers, even after years of training in the system, still have difficulty navigating through the courts to a successful outcome. Instead of simple justice we have a convoluted and contradictory system designed for perpetual litigation (make work for attorneys) and an obstruction of true justice. Courts cannot be predicted, even on seemingly clear issues, because the layers of contradictory case law laid down for decades give ripe opportunity for the whimsical discretion of the presiding judge. One rule or statute may command certain conduct, while another commands a contradictory result. Fill a law library with enough rules and statutes and the judiciary is unfettered in its ability to pick and chose the outcome of any given matter. Justice can be obstructed, truth can be ignored and the Constitution shunned. After all, when the system fails you, to whom are you going to apply for a remedy? In the last 10 years, how many people have filed law suits against government officials to enforce the violation of their constitutional rights? I have filed several and personally know of thousands more. How many have succeeded? Almost none. Yes, Rodney King won his, mostly through the illumination of media attention, but most fail to pass the initial Motion to Dismiss for “failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted,” or run into the wall of immunity -- judicially created immunity. Such immunity exists only because of case law or “judicial legislation” which claims that such immunity exists. Can such immunity from damage suits be anything other than the obstruction of justice when judges and prosecutors willingly and intentionally violate the Constitution and laws depriving us of our constitutionally secured rights?

Constitutionally, judges can't legislate and no act of Congress has granted them any immunity. It's nothing more than one of the feathers in their judicial cap. That cap however is the hat of judicial anarchy which is bleeding away what's left of our nation and our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor like so much sap in a tree. Next month we'll expose how we have been milked and mined into this state of judicial anarchy, as Thomas Jefferson so aptly explains:

“The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our Constitution from a Co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet, and they are too well versed in English law to forget the maxim, 'boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem.' [good judges have ample jurisdiction]”

l ~Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Riche 1820.