Our Constitution v. Case Law

That sounds great, until you stop to think. Since we are dealing with a lawyer, the circumstance would wisely call us to scrutinize what “is is,” or, what Gorsuch may think the law is.

If the year was 1803, and we were talking to Chief Justice John Marshall, “the law” in Gorsuch’s formulation would be the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, Marshall made this abundantly clear in Marbury v. Madison: the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and nothing opposed to it has legal validity. “[A] law repugnant to the Constitution is void, and [...] courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.” (Marbury, 1803)

But today’s legal class follows a different drummer: case law.

Case law means that Roe v. Wade, or any other unjust decree from our feigned rulers on the bench, supplants the clear words and purpose of the Constitution.

Thus, today’s lawyer is trained to knee-jerk apply whatever the Supreme Court has previously said, no matter the injustice, immorality, or imposition forced upon the people.

Stare decisis, they call it. We call it lawmaking from the bench. But lawyerspeak conflates stare decisis (precedent) with the “rule of law.”

So, we may be dealing with the typical lawyer’s trick, the usual sophistry dressed in black. Beware of lawyers who save the fine print for last.