From the March 2003 Idaho Observer:

American legal system currupt beyond recognition, says federal judge

by The Idaho Observer

The American legal system has been “corrupted almost beyond recognition,” Fifth District U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Edith Jones told the Federalist Society at its Feb. 28, 2003 meeting at the Harvard Law School.

Judge Jones explained that zealous prosecutors are increasingly willing to sacrifice what is morally right for political expediency. She also said that the change has come because our nation's legal philosophy has decended to “nihlism.”

Nihlism is defined as, “1. a negative doctrine, the total rejection of current beliefs in religion or morals. 2. a form of skepticism that denies all existence.”

Judge Jones would have been hard pressed to find a word that could have painted the current state of our nation's legal affairs in a worse light. “The integrity of law, its religious roots, its transcendent quality are disappearing,” she said.

“The first 100 years of American lawyers were trained on Blackstone, who wrote that, 'The law of nature... dictated by God himself...is binding...in all counties and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all force and all their authority...from this original.'

“The Framers created a government of limited power with this understanding of the rule of law - that it was dependent on transcendent religious obligation,” said Jones.

She also illustrated her belief that Americans have come to have a very negative view of lawyers with the aid of the movie “Chicago” with Richard Gere.

Judge Jones concluded by stating, “1) the state exists to preserve freedom, 2) the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and 3) it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to state what the law is, not what it should be.