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<\/p>\nThe Integrity of the Court<\/p>\n
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The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority \u2013 US Constitution, Article III, \u00a7 1<\/em><\/p>\n John Marshall was the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.\u00a0 He was a Federalist, appointed by President John Adams.\u00a0 After the election of 1800, the Democratic Republicans were in power, with Thomas Jefferson as the new President. While the Supreme Court was a theoretically a co-equal branch of the Constitution, its position as the third branch (Article III) symbolized its standing \u2013 third in line.<\/p>\n Every branch of government determined what the new Constitution meant, and they did it with every action they took.\u00a0 The Congress ultimately had the power of the purse, the ability to pay or withhold payment for government actions.\u00a0 The President had the \u201ctrappings\u201d of government power; the military and the Federal law enforcement agencies.\u00a0 But what did the Supreme Court have?<\/p>\n They didn’t have prosecutors, those were in the Executive Branch.\u00a0 The Court could only hear cases brought to them; it could not make an independent determination of law without a case.\u00a0 They had no enforcement mechanism; the Court could make a ruling, but another branch had to enforce it (thirty years later President Andrew Jackson would supposedly say about the Cherokee removal:\u00a0 \u201c\u2026 Marshall made his decision, let him enforce it\u201d<\/em>.)<\/p>\n They had no control over their membership:\u00a0 the President appointed Justices and the Senate confirmed them.\u00a0 They had no control over their number; it started as five, then seven, then nine, then ten, back to seven, and finally in 1869, seemed set at nine.\u00a0 But Congress can still determine that number, and it can be changed by their will (with the current controversy the Court membership should keep that in mind.)<\/p>\n The power of the Supreme Court was shrewdly established by the decisions of Chief Justice Marshall, with the most famous being Marbury v Madison<\/em>.\u00a0 In that decision, Marshall established that the Court could determine the Constitutionality of the acts of Congress.<\/p>\n While we think \u201cour time\u201d is the most political and controversial ever, the election of 1800 was just as ugly, and just as divided as we are today.\u00a0 On losing office, President Adams tried to \u201cpack\u201d the judiciary with Federalists (including Marshall himself.)\u00a0 The \u201clast minute\u201d nature of this action (they were called \u201cMidnight Judges\u201d) meant that not all of the legal paperwork appointing these judges was delivered before Adams left and Jefferson took charge.\u00a0 Jefferson instructed his Secretary of State, James Madison, not to deliver them.<\/p>\n Marbury went to Court to get his appointment, legally signed and sealed by the former President.\u00a0 Marshall wrote that Jefferson was wrong in not delivering the document, a statement that could have led to a crisis if Jefferson defied the Court.<\/p>\n But Marshall went onto say that the law under which Marbury was suing in Court, passed by Congress, unconstitutionally expanded the power of the Court.\u00a0 He then declared that act of Congress unconstitutional, gaining the power of judicial review, determining the meaning of the Constitution, for the Court.<\/p>\n Marshall got his \u201cshot\u201d at Jefferson, and he also got his \u201cshot\u201d at the now Democratic-Republican Congress.\u00a0 But most significantly he established the role of the Supreme Court in our three-branch system, in a most highly charged political atmosphere.\u00a0 He did it without an Army, and through the power of his decision.\u00a0And, like it or not, his decision, and the many others he wrote in his thirty-four years at the helm, established the third branch of government.<\/p>\n Politics and the Supreme Court are old friends.\u00a0 The controversy over the Kavanaugh nomination may seem unprecedented, but the Court was born in political turmoil, and its power forged in the first peaceful democratic transfer of power in 1800.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s controversy, combined with the long brewing battle over the makeup of the Court, is not much different from the \u201cMidnight Judges\u201d of John Adams.\u00a0 There has been a long-term strategy of the \u201cright,\u201d represented by the aptly named Federalist Society, to gain control of the Court. They are on the cusp of success, Kavanaugh\u2019s confirmation represents that fifth and decisive vote on this nine member court (the left has done their best as well, with four \u201cliberal\u201d justices already seated.)\u00a0 Just as our Congress and our politics have lost a \u201cmiddle ground;\u201d so has the Court.<\/p>\n What Kavanaugh did as a younger man is important.\u00a0 But, if he committed those alleged actions, what is so much more important is what he is doing now. \u00a0His denying that these actions even occurred, if they actually did occur, is perjury.\u00a0 Integrity means accepting responsibility for past actions:\u00a0 and integrity is what the Supreme Court stands upon.\u00a0 Kavanaugh\u2019s integrity is in question, either he is being falsely accused, or he is lying now.<\/p>\n