It has become more and more obvious over the years that the fear the founders had about the power of the judiciary to legislate from the bench has come to pass. With the requirement for Senate approval of Supreme Court justices, it has become purely a political arrangement without the consent of the States as was intended by the founders. The founders created the judicial branch to have exclusive purview over deciding if current law conforms and does not infringe on individual as well as states’ rights as set forth in the Constitution. Jefferson stated very clearly, “On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” As you may recall that in 1913, the 17th amendment ended the States participation in the Federal government by requiring Senators to be elected by the general population as opposed to being appointed by the State legislatures. Without States rights or interests entering into the decision process as originally intended, the nomination process has become based on the ideology of the majority party in the Senate at the time of appointment.
One such decision which illustrates this politically motivated legislative trend by the Supreme Court was demonstrated in Everson v. Board of Education. The court stated that the first amendment” erected a wall between church and state and that the wall must be high and impregnable.” In fact, this notion of a separation is actually from a private letter from Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists. He was assuring the clergy that the government would never create a national religion as is clearly stated in the first amendment. Just think, taking a phrase from a private letter and creating a Constitutional precedent is quite audacious and absurd in view of Jefferson’s statement on Constitutional construction. Never the less it has become the law of the land and actively supported by the numerous law suits against school boards, administrators and teachers by the ACLU.
Given this scenario of Constitutional definition by the Supreme Court, should we be just as diligent in following and prosecuting all the rulings and not just the one’s that support our political agenda? I am speaking of the courts decision in Minor v, Happersett. In this case, the Chief Justice, Morrison Waite issued the following Supreme Court decision: “The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.” This decision was rendered before the 17th amendment when the considerations of the founders meaning were still relevant. It has nothing to do with the impending lawsuits about the authenticity of a birth certificate or where anyone was born. This legal precedent was reinforced in Venus 12 U.S. 8 Cranch, Shanks v. Dupont, 28 U.S. 3 Pet., and United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. It is obvious that any question as to the meaning of “natural born citizen” in the Constitution with respect to eligibility for office has a very clear legal definition. Things associated with violating this legal requirement must be assumed fraudulent in nature