John Eidsmoe
Lt. Colonel, USAFR(Ret.)
Colonel,
Professor,
2648 Pine Acres,
(334) 270-1789 fax (334) 386-7223 EidsmoeJA@juno.com
A CALL TO STAND WITH CHIEF JUSTICE
MOORE
The storm of moral crisis has descended upon
All of these issues come together in the Alabama Ten Commandments case,
often cited as Glassroth v.
The symbolic portrayal could not be more graphic. In the rotunda of the
Recently I have noticed a shift in the debate. A few weeks ago the debate centered between those who say Judge Thompson is right and those who say Judge Thompson is wrong. Today, the debate seems to be between those who say Judge Thompson is wrong but his order must be obeyed, and those who say Judge Thompson is wrong and we must resist his order.
I have written at great length to articulate my belief that the Ten
Commandments may properly be displayed in court houses and other public
buildings; the most complete exposition of my position may be found in my
article "The Alabama Ten Commandments Case: Is the Pendulum of
Establishment Clause Jurisprudence Swinging Back to Nonpreferentialism?" Jones
Law Review II:
Today I am writing to declare my belief that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore
is justified in disobeying Federal Judge Myron Thompson's order to remove the
Ten Commandments monument, and that public officials,
pastors, and other citizens of
I do not treat disobedience lightly. As a former prosecutor, a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel and Judge Advocate, and a Colonel and Chaplain in the Alabama State Defense Force, I strongly believe in the rule of law. The rule of law means we submit to lawful authority. But just as strongly, the rule of law means we resist unlawful authority. For the rule of law restrains both the people and their rulers. Where law does not restrain the people, the result is anarchy. Where law does not restrain the rulers, there is tyranny. Those who believe in the rule of law must be equally opposed to both.
It is often said that a public official, especially a State Supreme Court
Chief Justice, has a higher duty than others to obey the orders of a federal court,
that civil disobedience may be an option for a private citizen but not for
Chief Justice Moore. The exact opposite is true. State officials have a
heightened duty to resist unlawful federal authority, and when they do so it is
called interposition.
Black's Law Dictionary, Fourth Edition offers the following definition:
" Interposition. The doctrine that a state, in the exercise of its sovereignty, may reject a mandate of the federal government deemed to be unconstitutional or to exceed the powers delegated to the federal government.
The concept is based on the 10th Amendment of the
Constitution of the
Implementation of the doctrine may be peaceable, as by resolution, remonstrance or legislation, or may proceed ultimately to nullification with forcible resistance.
The Constitution does contemplate and provide for the contingency of adverse state interposition or legislation to annul or defeat the execution of national laws." In Re Charge to Grand Jury, Fed. Case No. 18,274 [2 Spr. 292].
Far from a radical doctrine, interposition is actually a middle ground position. Absolute submission to unlawful authority leads to and sanctions tyranny and oppression. Popular rebellion can lead to chaos and bloodshed. Interposition -- lesser magistrates, state and local authorities, placing themselves between their people and the higher magistrates or federal authorities -- is a moderate course that is less likely to result in either extreme.
Interposition has a long tradition in Western law and has led to some of the greatest advances in constitutional liberty. Medieval theologians and philosophers who addressed and endorsed interposition include John of Salisbury (1030-85 AD), James of Viterbo (circa 1300 AD), and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD). Aquinas believed that
"...the duty of obedience is, for the
Christian, a consequence of this derivation of authority from God, and ceases
when that ceases. But, as we have already said, authority may fail to derive
from God for two reasons: either because of the way in which authority has been
obtained, or in consequence of the use which is made of it." (Book 2, Commentary
on the Sentences of Peter Lombard)
When a ruler becomes a tyrant, his authority no longer comes from God and he becomes an illegitimate ruler. While it may be better to bear with moderate degrees of tyranny, Christians must stand against the ruler when his tyranny becomes excessive. But popular rebellion may have disastrous consequences: the ruler may suppress the rebellion and become more tyrannical than before, or those who overthrow him, fearing that others may do the same, become just as tyrannical as their predecessors. So what is the solution? Aquinas says,
"...it seems that to proceed against the cruelty of tyrants is an action to be undertaken, not through the private presumption of a few, but rather by public authority." (Book 1, On Kingship)
While continental theologians wrote about interposition, English theologians
and nobles put interposition into practice. Since 890 AD
On
Two years later, the barons and bishops commissioned Robert Fitz Walter as
This was a constitutional crisis of the first order. It was handled by interposition -- and we have been blessed with the results for nearly eight hundred years.
A century later the Scots practiced interposition against
English rule under King Alexander, Malcolm Wallace, William Wallace, Robert the
Bruce, and others. In April 1320 Robert the Bruce gathered the
Parliament of Scotland at Arbroath Abbey, where they drafted and adopted the
Declaration of Arbroath, in which they set forth their history as a free people
until the usurpation of King Edward of
"...for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we under any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."
(Scottish history and thought have greatly influenced
Reformation leaders followed and further developed the Catholic teaching on interposition. John Calvin declared that private individuals normally should not undertake the curbing of tyrants but should follow "popular magistrates" in doing so:
"For when popular magistrates have been appointed to curb the tyranny of kings (as the Ephori, who were opposed to kings among the Spartans, or Tribunes of the people to consuls among the Romans, or Demarchs to the senate among the Athenians; and perhaps there is something similar to this in the power exercised in each kingdom by the three orders, when they hold their primary diets), so far am I from forbidding these officially to check the undue license of kings, that if they connive at kings when they tyrannize and insult over the humbler of the people, I affirm that their dissimulation is not free from nefarious perfidy; because they fraudulently betray the liberty of the people, while knowing that, by the ordinance of God, they are its appointed guardians." (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 20, 1559 AD)
Other Reformation leaders who articulated the doctrine of interposition were John Knox, father of the Presbyterian Church (1505-72 AD), the French Huguenot author of Vindicae Contra Tyrannos (1579 AD) who used the surname Junius Brutus, and Scottish theologian Samuel Rutherford in Lex Rex (1644 AD). Among Catholic and Protestant theologians alike, I am just barely skimming the surface because of time and space constraints.
In the 1600s, while the English colonies of
Through decades of struggle, the Parliament practiced various forms of
interposition: negotiation, legislation, litigation agitation. Twice they took
interposition further, trying and convicting King Charles I of treason and
executing him in 1649, and deposing James II in the bloodless Glorious
Revolution of 1688 and forcing him to flee to
And as the struggle for liberty waged in
Less than a century later it was
"...The good people of the several colonies...justly alarmed at these arbitrary proceedings of parliament and administration, have severally elected, constituted, and appointed deputies to meet, and sit in general Congress...in order to obtain such establishment, as that their religion, laws, and liberties, may not be subverted."
After two years of futile attempts to practice moderate forms of
interposition and resolve their differences with
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The Declaration cautions that established governments should not be changed for light and transient reasons:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them to absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The Declaration then sets forth a list of grievances that, taken together, establish that George III has exercised tyranny over the colonies and concludes that "A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."
The Declaration proclaims that "these United Colonies, are and of Right ought to be free and independent States,." appeals to "the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions," rests "a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence," and the signers close by pledging "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."
Think for a moment. Suppose liberty's champions of the past had believed that one should never resist higher authority. Archbishop Langton would never have forced King John to sign the Magna Charta, the Scots would not have fought for independence, the Glorious Revolution would hever have taken place, the English Bill of Rights would never have been drafted, and we today would still be subject to the English king.
But they did believe in interposition. Aren't you glad they did?
The Founding Fathers did not renounce their belief in interposition once
"In the Name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity."
Four years later they drafted a Constitution which was designed to, among other things, "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity;" note that "blessings must come from a Higher Source.
The Constitution was intended to ensure that government had enough power to
govern effectively, but also to ensure that government did not become
tyrannical and oppressive.
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master."
"In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
Knowing the tendency of power to corrupt and aggrandize, they designed a
Constitution that would chain down that dangerous servant and keep it from
becoming a fearful master. They accomplished this end by carefully limiting the
powers of government; by separating the powers vertically among federal, state
and local levels and horizontally among legislative, executive and judicial
branches; and by providing checks and balances whereby each branch and level,
guarding its own powers against encroachments by the others, would check and
balance the other branches and levels and force them to adhere to their
constitutional limitations. This constitutional system has made the
But in recent decades the system has become unbalanced. Federal power has expanded exponentially, at the expense of state and local authority and individual freedom. And the judicial branch of the federal government has become nearly absolute in its authority. Checks and balances against the judiciary still exist, but the other branches and levels of government seem unwilling to employ them. The result is that, as Professor Graglia of the University of Texas School of Law has stated,
"...judicial usurpation of legislative power has become so common and complete that the Supreme Court has become our most powerful and important instrument of government in terms of determining the nature and quality of American life. Questions literally of life and death (abortion and capital punishment), of public morality (control of pornography, prayer in the schools, and government aid to religious schools), and of public safety (criminal procedure and street demonstrations), are all, now, in the hands of judges under the guise of questions of constitutional law. The fact that the Constitution says nothing of, say, abortion, and indeed, explicitly and repeatedly recognizes the capital punishment the Court has come close to prohibiting, has made no difference.
The result is that the central truth of constitutional law today is that it has nothing to do with the Constitution except that the words 'due process' or 'equal protection' are almost always used by the judges in stating their conclusions. Not to put too fine a point on it, constitutional law has become a fraud, a cover for a system of government by the majority vote of a nine-person committee of lawyers, unelected and holding office for life."
A further problem with judicial review is that many judges no longer feel
bound by the plain wording of the Constitution and the intent of those who
wrote it. The result, as Chancellor
Good arguments can be made for judicial review, at least in a limited form. But does judicial review really mean that every time a federal judge issues an order, every other branch and every other level of government must salute, say "Yes Sir!" and march in lockstep to the beat of a federal judge's drum. As a Professor of Constitutional Law for 20 years, I challenge anyone to show me any language in the Constitution that gives federal judges such absolute power. Such a notion would fly in the face of the Framers' basic belief that no one branch or level should have such absolute power. Many leading Americans have emphatically rejected this notion. For example, Thomas Jefferson wrote in an 1820 letter,
"You seem...to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions -- a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. ... Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so... . They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.
... The Constitution has erected no such tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots."
President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce orders of the Supreme Court with which he disagreed. Abraham Lincoln declared that
"...if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties to personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
And Theodore Roosevelt wrote,
"It is the people, and not the judges, who are entitled to say what their constitution means, for the constitution is theirs, it belongs to them and not to their servants in office -- any other theory is incompatible with the foundation principles of our government."
"The philosophical assumptions of judicial review are so inconsistent with democratic theory that there is along tradition of resistance to it. The resistance, today, is a largely underground movement that exists outside the normal academic and law school curriculum. Historically, the members of the resistance are an impressive group. The include the great democratic presidents: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. They include the great constitutional scholars: James Bradley Thayer, The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law (1893) and John Marshall [a 1920 book by Thayer]; Louis Boudin, Government by Judiciary (1932); Edward S. Corwin, Court over Constitution (1938); Henry Steele Commager, Majority Rule and Minority Rights (1943); and Learned Hand, The Bill of Rights (1958). Who made the Court, as Learned Hand asks: 'the arbiters of all political authority in the nation with a discretion to act or not, as they please?'"
Chief Justice John Marshall firmly entrenched the principle of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803). In that opinion he declared that a law repugnant to the Constitution is null and void. But if an Act of Congress is null and void if inconsistent with the Constitution, does not follow that the order of an unelected federal judge is also null and void if inconsistent with the Constitution?
At some point we must stand up and say to the federal judiciary, "Enough is enough! You have usurped powers that the Constitution has not delegated to you. You have imposed upon the rightful authority of the states." But when do we reach that point?
I believe we have reached that point when a federal judge tells the people of Alabama that they may not place the Ten Commandments, the moral foundation of law, in the Judicial Building of the State of Alabama -- and when, to add insult to injury, they vaunt their sculpture of the Greek goddess Themis at the federal court house just a few blocks away.
The issue is more than a monument. The issue is whether a judge may acknowledge the existence of transcendent moral absolutes and use those absolutes as he interprets and applies the law.
Many pastors have criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to legalize abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973) and to legalize sodomy in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). But what is wrong with a court legalizing abortion and sodomy, if God's Law has no place in American courts?
I have known Chief Justice Roy Moore for many years. In this case, and in
the earlier
I regret that the eight associate justices did not join with Chief Justice
Moore as did the Justices of the Supreme Court of Utah in 1968. In Dyett v.
Turner, 439 P.2d 266, the Utah Supreme Court stood against the usurpations
of the
"The United States Supreme Court, as at
present constituted, has departed from the Constitution as it has been
interpreted from its inception and has followed the urgings of social reformers
in foisting upon this Nation laws which even Congress could not
constitutionally pass. It has amended the Constitution in a manner unknown to
the document itself. While it takes three-fourths of the states of the
We do not believe that justices of once free and independent states should surrender their constitutional powers without being heard from. We would betray the trust of our people if we sat supinely by and permitted the great bulk of our powers to be taken over by the federal courts without at lest stating reasons why it should not be so. By attempting to save the dual relationship which has heretofore existed between state and federal authority, and which is clearly set out in the Constitution, we think we act in the best interest of our country.
We feel like galley slaves chained to our oars by a power from which we cannot free ourselves, but like the slaves of old we think we must cry out when we can see the boat heading into the maelstrom directly ahead of us; and by doing so, we hope the master of the craft will heed the call and avert the dangers which confront us all.
But by raising our voices in protest we, like the galley slaves of old, expect to be lashed for doing so. We are confident that we will not be struck by 90 percent of the people of this Nation who long for the return to the days when the Constitution was a document plain enough to be understood by all who read it, the meaning of which was set firmly like a jewel in the matrix of common sense and wise judicial decisions.
... When we bare our backs to receive the verbal lashes, we will try to be brave; and should the great court of these United States decide that in our thinking we have been in error, then we shall indeed feel honored, for we will then be placed on an equal footing with all those great justices who at this late date are also said to have been in error for so many years."
I deeply regret that the other Justices have not seen fit to join with Chief
Justice Moore in resisting this federal judge's attempt to prohibit us from
acknowledging the Ten Commandments as the moral foundation of law. But other judges, legislators and public officials have stood with
Chief Justice Moore, and it is therefore of crucial importance that the people
of
In the crisis that is upon
"...when Christ said 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's,' He gave to the State a legitimacy it had never before enjoyed, and set bounds to it that had never yet been acknowledged. And He not only delivered the precept but He also forged the instrument to execute it. To limit the power of the State ceased to be the hope of patient, ineffectual philosophers and became the perpetual charge of a universal Church."
During the American War for
Today
Is Chief Justice Moore's battle for the Ten Commandments a "lost
cause?" There is no such thing as a lost cause until the last chapter of
history has been written. Various new legal moves are underway, and the Spirit
of God is at work. But regardless of the outcome of this case, we must take a
stand for what is right. A century from now, as Americans seek to put the
pieces together and rediscover the moral foundation of law, they will remember
what we did in
And in the evening of your life, when your grandchildren ask what you did during the constitutional crisis over the Ten Commandments, what will you tell them?
"For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at
this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from
another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who
knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther
4:14
Godspeed,
John Eidsmoe