In our modern, post-Christian, post-monarchy, post-Enlightenment, post-rational society, the closest thing our humanist culture has to a “god” is the judge. In 1907, Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes famously remarked: “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judge says it is.” Case closed! This inimical judicial philosophy was enshrined early in American constitutional law by that controversial Supreme Court decision authored by Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison (1803).

The Marbury opinion invented out of whole cloth what latter became known as the doctrine of “judicial review” and gave to judges what was traditionally a limited and discrete power to now with godlike authority dictate what the law is (judicial interpretation). But here is the diabolical part: Where no law existed, or the law was vague about what Congress intended, this newly created Super Judge (whom law professor Ronald Dworkin calls “Hercules") could decree to We the People – the ignorant, unwashed masses – what the law ought to be. The radical effects on constitutional law, on jurisprudence, on the rule of law, on society caused by the Marbury v. Madison decision over 200 years ago are still being felt in modern times, with more horrible consequences to come.  Full Item