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The recent Supreme Court decision upholding Congress's ban on Partial-Birth Abortion, in contrast to the High Court's contrary decision in a similar case in 2000, shows the crucial importance of just one justice. The replacement of Sandra Day O'Connor with Samuel Alito made the difference. When the next vacancy occurs, we can expect a no-holds-barred political battle. That's why it is so important to heed President George W. Bush's caveat that we will not stand for activist judges who are legislating from the bench and remaking our culture through court order. Phyllis Schlafly's book The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It sold out in This book is an easy read for non-lawyers. It is structured with one chapter on each group of activist decisions: the God decisions (e.g., Pledge of Allegiance, Ten Commandments), marriage, sovereignty, pornography, feminism, law enforcement, elections, and taxes. The new chapters are on property rights, immigration, and parents' rights. Whatever issue is most important to the reader, this book shows that a supremacist decision by activist judges probably started the problem. Because the U.S. Supreme Court takes only about one percent of appeals, the book includes lower court decisions which have finality because they will probably never reach the Supreme Court with a chance to be overturned. This is particularly true of the cases involving parents' rights in public schools. The Supremacists also explains how the legal community came to espouse the notion that whatever some judge says is "the law of the land." It started with the regime of Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1950s. It certainly was not the design of the U.S. Constitution; Article III clearly gives Congress the power to define the jurisdiction of the federal courts. The book makes it easy for the general public to discuss court decisions in common-sense language. A study guide is available for those who form study groups to learn more about how court decisions are changing our culture, and to organize to demand congressional action to restrain judicial supremacy and restore self-government by our elected legislative bodies. (Spence Publishing, Revised & Expanded in 2006, 246 pp., $16.95) |
its original edition in 2004, but has now been revised and re-issued containing 60 additional pages and three new chapters. It's hard to keep up with the continuing stream of supremacist decisions, but this book does it.
