Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 29, 1990 TAG: 9007310319
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Count me among the unappreciative. Count me also among the amused when I hear liberals assert that there needs to be a "balance" on the Supreme Court.
Where was the balance in cases such as Roe vs. Wade (decided by a 7-2 margin) or any number of other cases, from the secularization of the public schools, to affirmative action, to busing?
The left has so politicized the court that the president had to move quickly to replace Justice William Brennan with Judge David Souter. Because, as White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater remarked, "we saw that some of the special interests - on abortion, civil rights - were trying to cook up a stew that this nomination would get dumped into."
The stew that has been bubbling on the legal stove since the 1950s was concocted when the left began to depart from the historical view of the nature of law and the nature of man.
Writing in his "Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity" in 1594, Richard Hooker said: "Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is in the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world . . .
America's founders observed these laws at work in nature; in addition to referring to "our Creator," they spoke of a "natural law" that contributed to "self-evident" truths.
The great English jurist William Blackstone, who preceded Judge Souter at Oxford by two centuries, wrote in his "Commentaries on the Laws of England" that the beginning of law is to be found in the Lawgiver, which is to say God, whose Ten Commandments still grace the walls of the U.S. Supreme Court, though not of our public schools.
Blackstone also wrote: "The doctrines thus delivered we call revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures. Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these."
The nature of law has changed, because man's view of himself has changed. Even Robert Bork, who was championed by many conservatives for a seat on the Supreme Court, has said that judges "can have nothing to do with any absolute set of truths existing independently and depending upon God or the nature of the universe. If a judge should claim to have access to such a body of truths, to possess a volume of the annotated natural law, we would, quite justifiably, suspect that the source of the revelation was really no more exalted than the judge's viscera."
This, then, is the problem with modern law and the Supreme Court. The court and the law have moved from holding certain truths to be self-evident, to no truth at all, at least none that is absolute, which is another way of saying no truth.
For if there are no absolutes, nothing that is always right (such as justice) and always wrong (such as murder), then truth becomes a relative term out of our reach or understanding.
Until modern times, the law was seen as necessary to control men and women because of their generally recognized imperfect nature. (The Bible calls that nature "sin," but we now deny that nature and pretend we are perfectable - given enough time, the right medicine and the proper education.)
Because our view of ourselves has changed, so has our view of the law. Instead of conforming ourselves to the standard of the Lawgiver, we now deny that he exists and have turned the Ten Commandments into the 10 suggestions. We have created a new set of laws, a "living Constitution" as William Brennan called it, and adapted it to our perceived contemporary needs and desires, which are determined by public-opinion polls.
The danger of this world view is stated by constitutional attorney John Whitehead: ". . . there is no valid standard to determine rights if they are seen autonomously - either as the claim of the autonomous individual or as the gracious endowment of autonomous man through the will of the state. Each man may be a law unto himself. In this case, anything goes and all actions are equally acceptable."
That is the state in which the modern Supreme Court finds itself. Even a "conservative" judge like David Souter, who may change the pattern of rulings, won't correct the errors of the recent past unless he understands the true nature of man and the source of original law. Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB