"The New Juristocracy"

By Andrew C. McCarthy at The New Criterion:

.... However patently central it is to a good society, the judicial function remains largely irrelevant to the international order. For all the blather about our “international community,” it is an ersatz community, lying beyond our laws and democratic choices. Unlike dreamy modern internationalists, the Framers well understood that broad swaths of this “community” — enemies of the United States — would always pose threats, some existential, to the body politic.

Such threats are not legal problems. They do not principally involve Americans being deprived of their legal entitlements by their government — the cases and controversies judicial power was designed to resolve. They are clashes between the American national community and the outside world. They are the stuff of political power — diplomacy, force, and all the intermediate measures wielded by the political branches. The judicial power has no place because American courts are part and parcel of the American national community; they do not exist outside or above it.

In our system, rising to external threats from alien forces with no claim on the protections of American law would be the domain of the political branches. In times of crisis and war, it would be uniquely the province of an energetic executive. All the immense might the United States could muster for its self-preservation would be concentrated in one set of hands, able to act swiftly and decisively to quell enemies endlessly variant in size, strength, and method of attack....

(Thanks, Matthew.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 09/09/06 10:13:18 AM
Categorized as More Than Readworthy.