The rule of law(yers)

By By Craig Ziemba
Nov. 10, 2002
Craig Ziemba is a pilot who lives in Meridian.
The stillness that settled momentarily upon America after the frenzy of this election won't last long. The biggest battle since Operation Anaconda is about to begin over President Bush's judicial nominations for the federal bench, and if the smear campaigns waged against other recent conservative nominees were any indication, things are about to get ugly early.
At stake is a rare but important opportunity to reverse the alarming trend of rule by judges and return to the rule of law. Terms like conservative and liberal are frequently stamped on judicial nominees to polarize their opposition and support, but those labels really don't explain the difference between so-called left and right wing judges.
Most Americans think that conservative judges make their decisions based upon their personal beliefs about issues such as abortion, affirmative action and the death penalty. In truth, a judge's personal beliefs, conservative or liberal, shouldn't matter. The role of a judge is to impartially apply the law as it was written by the legislature, not as he wishes it were written or thinks it should have been written.
Judges who believe in a literal interpretation of the law (strict constructionalists if you want a technical term) are usually labeled conservative, while those who believe that the law need not be taken literally and is open to a wide range of interpretations (loose constructionalists) are usually labeled liberals. The practical difference is huge.
No matter how good his intentions may be, no matter how strong a sense of justice he may feel regarding a particular case, when a judge goes beyond what is written in the law and imposes his own will instead, he crosses the line that ensures the checks and balances of our free society and destroys the very law he is supposed to uphold.
For that reason, when a judge is faced with a case for which there is no clear law, he must dismiss it and wait for the Legislature to act. If a judge really doesn't like the law or doesn't think it goes far enough, he should resign from the bench and run for the Legislature to change it.
Our Constitution gave the power to make law to the people through their elected representatives, not to the Supreme Court or other federal courts. Representatives who face re-election every two years are much less likely to act contrary to the will of the people than are un-elected judges who are appointed for life. That's an important distinction.
For decades, however, federal courts have ruled on issues where the Constitution and lawful congressional legislation was silent. From school prayer to the rights of the unborn, liberal judges have injected their own beliefs into their decisions and have forced illegitimate outcomes that never would have been possible through the democratic process.
Through the judiciary, the Left has won far more of its agenda than it ever could have through the ballot box. That's why the left will wage war against every single conservative judicial nominee that comes before the Senate. Its future depends on it.
The clich, "The Constitution is whatever the judges say it is," has become the cornerstone of modern constitutional theory. Law students spend years studying judicial opinions as if the opinion of a judge was as important as the law itself. Legal precedent has become its own self-perpetuating, unconstitutional source of de facto law.
In reality, however, the law isn't some incomprehensible mystery known only to a few old geezers in black robes. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are fairly straightforward to anyone with an honest desire to understand them. Much like theologians, though, who come up with 10-syllable terms to describe something as simple as the Golden Rule, lawyers have muddied the clarity of the Constitution with arguments and high-sounding legal terms that make the simple complex and cause the layman to feel as if he's not smart enough to understand the Constitution.
So what's the difference between a conservative and a liberal judge? In a perfect world there would be none, both would judge according to the law. But in our world, the difference determines whether we are ruled by law or by lawyers.