Theodore Olson and the Legal System

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal by Theodore Olson carries these lines:

- So it is time to take a deep breath, step back, and inject a little perspective into the recent heated rhetoric about judges and the courts.

We might start by getting a firm grip on the reality that our independent judiciary is the most respected branch of our government, and the envy of the world. -

Respected by whom?

You have judges masturbating in court rooms, taking bribes, sleeping during trials, more importantly telling us the Constitution says things that clearly are not there and telling us things that are plainly written in it are not there. Cap that with a judge directing the torture death of a handicapped lady in Florida. The judge claimed she was in a “Persistent Vegetative State”, a view held by three of the five experts he allowed.

Oh, respected by who? Probably the same people who think the Israelis were behind 9/11 or the people who think there is a vast Right Wing Conspiracy or the people that think “Bush Lied” when he told us what he was being told by the intelligence community. Or maybe better yet by the people who think there is overwhelming evidence of Global Warming and the oil companies are keeping us from using the 100 mile per gallon carburetor.

We have a fantastic legal system. It serves the purposes of its constituents admirably. If you are a judge or an attorney, it does well by you.

If you are a normal everyday citizen, you might even get justice as a by-product of the legal system, or then again, you might not.

In the Terry Schiavo case, as in countless others, the legal system made it clear their priorities are perfecting their position as the ultimate authority, deflecting any possible questioning of their authority, increasing the span of governmental control, increasing the take of the legal system; then if there is anything left over, justice can be done as a by-product.

Mr. Olson’s article loses sight of the point. Just because the majority thinks something is so, it is not necessarily so, even if they are judges:

If a judge says a dog’s tail is a leg, how many legs does a dog have?

Four, calling a leg a tail does not make it a tail, even if it is called a tail by a judge.

The founding fathers gave our government a tripod on which to stand, not a monopod.

The Executive and the Legislative were to function as a check and balance on the Judiciary. Serve as a check and balance, not to bow down and worship it.