Welcome And Ways To Connect

SPEAKER_02 0:11

You find your way to the intersection of Faith and Politics, Wall Builders Live with David Barton and Rick Green, also found online at WallBuildersLive.com and Wallbuilders.com and also on Facebook. You can follow us there as well and comment on the shows as you get a chance to listen to them. And in fact, you might have a show you'd like us to cover, a topic, or an interview, you can email that to us at radio at wallbuilders.com. And we also encourage you to let your local station know. If you'd like to hear us locally, and we're not on a station there close to you. Which we probably are. There's about 200 around the country that are carrying us, so if you're not familiar with which station we're on close to you, then go check it out at wallboulderslive.com. Here we go to Building on the American Heritage Series with David Barton.

Myths About Judicial Power

SPEAKER_02 0:47

All right, David, our topic today is the judiciary. And we do talk about judges a lot in the news these days, but sometimes I think our perception may be wrong about the proper role of the judiciary.

SPEAKER_03 0:56

It is. A lot of times our perception is based on what people tell us, especially what judges tell us. Judges try to define their role. The Constitution is what defines their role. And in the case of Christians, the Bible also clearly defines the roles of judges. Judges are a big deal in the Bible. Lots of passages talk about the qualifications of judges, the behavior, the deportment of judges, how do they conduct themselves. So the Bible has a lot to say about judges. Matter of fact, one of our early founding fathers of the American jurisprudence system, James Kant, said our whole system of appeals courts came out of the Bible because Samuel the judge rode from Gilgal to Misbur to all these places to judge the people. And so that's why we have traveling courts that move from place to place. And so so much of what we had in tradition actually came out of the Bible. But because we've lost that, we don't read the Constitution like we should, we've really gotten into a bunch of myths that we bought into today. I mean, we buy into the myth that federal judges are appointed for life. County Father said no, they aren't. The Constitution says no, they aren't. But that's what most people believe. That's what most people think. Most people think the judiciary is an independent branch. No, it's not an independent branch. No branch is independent from the people. All three branches are accountable. There's tons of checks and balances in the Constitution to make sure the judiciary is not an independent branch. They were never to be separate from the other two branches as far as you guys can't touch us, we're the judges. No, no, never at all in any way, shape, fashion, or form.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Wouldn't that make any branch or any person despotic?

SPEAKER_03 2:13

You can do anything you want if you can't be touched and held accountable for it. And that's never designed because the government comes from we the people. It's to reflect the consent of the governors as our documents tell us. So we have those kind of issues. We we've also got issues we're told that only the judges get to decide what's constitutional or not. No, no, no. James Madison, the other guy, said all three branches get to decide what's constitutional. That's how you have checks and balances. The court may say it's constitutional, and the other two branches say no, it's not.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

That's a shocking one for people today, because we we think only the court can determine constitutionality. You're saying the president has the right to do that, Congress has the right to do that as well.

SPEAKER_03 2:47

And in the case of one of the earliest examples is Congress passed a law called the Alien Sedition Act. It says if you criticize the government of the United States, you're going to jail. The court didn't strike it unconstitutional, but President Jefferson got in there and said, that is a wacky law. You can't throw people in jail for saying something bad about the government. Twenty-five people had been taken to court on that law. Ten were sitting in jail because of it. President Jefferson comes in and says, that's an unconstitutional law, turned everybody out of jail. So all three branches have the ability to determine constitutionality. You don't let just a body of nine people or the majority of nine people, five people determine what's constitutional for the whole nation. No, no, no, no, no. That's never part of the design. So they all they all have the ability to do that. Are they all, we often hear they're equal branches. They're not equal branches. They're separate branches, but they're all accountable. As a matter of fact, the Federalist Papers right here, uh, very clear. Now the Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, both of them signed the Constitution, and John Jay, the original Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. They say in here that the legislative branch predominates. That's the most powerful branch. They also say that the judiciary branch is the weakest of all the branches, by far the weakest. Talks about the comparison. It says it has no power over the sword, over the purse, it can't influence society or policy. I mean, they go through and say they're not co-equal. I said, legislative is the biggest branch because that's the one closest to the people. It's got the most power. You look at Article I of the Constitution, really long. The next most powerful branch is the executive, because people choose the executive, but only every four years. So that Article II is a little shorter, but the tiniest article of all of the of the three in the Constitution is Article III, Judiciary. Because they're not chosen, they're not elected, therefore they get fewer opportunities to do anything. They have very limited opportunities. And so the founding fathers made real clear that they're not co-equal branches. As they said in the Federalist Papers, the liberties of the people will never be endangered by the judges because they don't have any power. Wish it was still that way. Wish it was still that way. But those are some of the judicial myths we've grown to accept that are historically fallacious, and they're even biblically fallacious in in many ways. And the Bible is the basis of our judicial system. It's just that most people don't know that, but we'll get to look at that.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Well,

Good Behavior And Real Accountability

SPEAKER_02 4:50

because of how much judges have been influencing the culture lately, we got a lot of questions on this one.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Since our judges are appointed for lifetime, how do we hold them accountable?

SPEAKER_02 4:59

Well, so where is the accountability if a judge is appointed for their whole life?

SPEAKER_03 5:03

Well, the the first part is they're not appointed for life. That's one of the things that people think today, and this is one of the great judicial myths that's out there that's absolutely not accurate. Um, if you go back and look at the Constitution, Article III, deals with judiciary, there's nothing in there about judges being appointed for life. They're not appointed for life. Matter of fact, you have to back up before that. You go back to 1765, the king was appointing judges in America. And starting in 1765, it was Samuel Adams, the father of the American Revolution, who started ringing the alarm bell saying, hey, we got a bad problem here. The king has started appointing judges for life over here. That's a really bad deal. And Sam Adams said, and the other bad deal is these guys are not accountable. And so as time went on, what would happen is the colonies would pass various laws and the king's judges would strike them down. I said, You guys can't do that. So if they strike down a law, there's no recourse for them. There was no recourse for them. And that that's why they specifically made sure that once they got control of government and the British were out of it, they stopped that. There's no lifetime appointments, and judges are accountable.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

But see, David, almost all of our people believe that they're lifetime appointments. I'll go to a constitution class and I'll ask, okay, how long are judges appointed for? And I'm not kidding, 99% to 100% of the people in the world. Lifetime appointments always will say yes. They're for lifetime.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

And that's people coming out wanting to study. Let me go back. All right, Sam Adams is from Massachusetts. He's the founding father of America, but he's specifically out of Massachusetts. And Sam Adams helped do this book right here. That's the Constitution of Massachusetts of 1780. So what happened was in 1776 they declared independence in America, and then most of the states started writing their constitution. 1776, Pennsylvania did. 1776, North Carolina wrote their state constitution, so did Virginia. They started working on that in Massachusetts, but they didn't get it written. And they worked and sent it back for revision. And so it's really 1779 before they they get it done, and it's ratified, and it goes into effect in 1780. But Sam Adams has been working on this since the very beginning. This is after the Declaration. This is after the Declaration. And by the way, those who are at the Constitutional Convention who did the federal constitution said they took ideas from state constitutions like that of Massachusetts. So here's what it says in the Declaration of Rights, right up front, setting forth fundamental principles that are never to be violated. This is how they'll operate their government. Item number five, it says all power residing originally in the people and being derived from the people. The several magistrates and officers of government vested with authority, whether they're legislative, executive, or judicial, are the people, substitutes and agents and are all time accountable to the people. Now, they made real sure that we weren't going to have unaccountable judges. And specifically included the judiciary, saying that the job is just a job. But the other part is, well, how about lifetime appointments? What they did and what they also did in the federal constitution, when you read it, it says that judges are allowed to hold, federal judges are allowed to hold their appointments for the quote, duration of good behavior. That's not a lifetime appointment. That's as long as you act right, you can stay there as a federal judge. But if you don't act right, we're gonna take you out. Now, significantly, the U.S. Constitution has six clauses on how to remove judges. There's nothing else in the U.S. Constitution that gets as much attention as those six clauses. That's more content than any other subject in the Constitution can't. So six clauses on how to remove judges. So if the founding fathers had these clauses and said we're gonna make sure judges are accountable and that they don't get lifetime appointments, why would they have thrown a judge off the court?

SPEAKER_02 8:40

That's what I was gonna ask you. If it says for good behavior, and then they have all these clauses for how to deal with bad behavior, what is bad behavior then? Or what is not good behavior, I guess is the right way to ask it.

SPEAKER_03 8:49

Well, the best way to know is go see the guys who wrote the clauses, see what they defined as good behavior by who they throw off the court. There was a federal judge thrown off the court because he cussed in the courtroom. That was enough. Founding fathers threw him off the court. Why'd they do that? Because the federal constitution says for the duration of good behavior. They said cussing in a courtroom is not good behavior for a judge. You're gone. Another guy was thrown off the court because he got drunk in his private life. Whoa, it's his private life. Had nothing to do with his judge. No, that's not good behavior for a judge. You're gone. Another guy got thrown off the court because he contradicted an act of Congress. Supreme Court does that all the time today. Congress passed an act, ah, we don't like that act, it's unconstitutional. No, he did that. You're gone, buddy.

SPEAKER_02 9:30

See, our perception is that that to do something like an impeachment, it has to be huge. It has to be, it has to be a major, major deal.

SPEAKER_03 9:37

Those are not major deals. Those are not major deals. See, there have been 97 impeachment investigations across history with judges. You've had 13 impeachments actually taken off the court. And the more often you have an impeachment investigation, the less often you have to remove a judge. Because what happens, Thomas Jefferson said impeachment is a scarecrow. I mean, you sit out there in the middle field and that'll scare them off. Because all the other judges are watching that going, I don't want that to be. For example, take the judge in California that says, Oh no, having under God the Pledge of Allegiance, completely unconstitutional. What you do is you convene a hearing in Washington, D.C., Congress says, hey, we want you to come up here before the Judiciary Committee and explain to us exactly what you're thinking is that says we can't acknowledge God when that's in the declaration and in the Constitution. What are you thinking? And other judges see him getting called before Congress to be accountable and they go, Oh my gosh, we're not going to touch that. Exactly. Thomas Jefferson said whatever branch is independent is absolute also. If we let the judges be independent in that way, then we're letting them be absolute. The Congress isn't independent. We hold them accountable in elections. President's not independent. We got elections every four years. Judges are not independent. Congress holds them accountable.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

So they they they are accountable through Congress to us. In other words, they're accountable to us, but Congress is the one that has to do their job of reigning in the court.

SPEAKER_03 10:46

And see that that that is the key thing with the courts, is that the Constitution set it up so that the other branches could check the court. Now, if the other branches refuse to do that, then judges do get lifetime appointments and they are unaccountable if the other branches refuse to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Because we as individual citizens, that's right, you just can't do more.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

You know, that and if that's not an issue for us, it's not gonna be an issue for a congressman. It's real simple.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

David, I think we've gotten an education on judges already, but let's get another question about it.

Why Juries Once Guarded Justice

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Did juries play a more important role in the judicial process of previous generations? Okay, well, maybe this will shift us a little from the judge to the jury.

SPEAKER_03 11:23

What was the role of the jury in the past? You know, the it's an interesting thing about the juries because there is a long history and it actually has a lot of biblical basis on the history. Now, a hundred years ago, we called them courts of justice because they existed to ensure that justice occurred. Then about 50 years ago, we went into what were called courts of law. We're not after judges, we're we're after holding up the law here. The law is more important than justice is. And then the most recent thing is we've just become courts, nothing else. And when you look at the definition of courts in the legal books today, it says a court is a place to settle disputes. Now, if you go back to when you you had courts of justice, the biggest entity, the most important entity in a court of justice was the jury. And the jury was more important than the judge. And from the time of the founding fathers till about the 1890s, juries were inseparable from any trial.

Kids History Resources From WallBuilders

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Hi friends, this is Tim Barton of Wall Builders. This is a time when most Americans don't know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes for parents, we're trying to find good content for our kids to read. And if you remember back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the Faith Hall of Fame where they outlined the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity and our faith as well. I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called the Courageous Leaders Collection, and this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Keith, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers. And there's a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection, you'll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman. Friends, the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read, and it's a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at wallbuilders.com. That's www.wallbuilders.com.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Let the tour to freedom.

Jury Nullification And Unjust Laws

SPEAKER_03 13:28

The significant thing about juries, and the founding fathers said this right from the beginning. Uh, John Jay and James Wilson, all these guys who who wrote the Constitution were on the Supreme Court, etc. They said that a jury is to examine both the law and the facts. So, Daniel, who the law says you can't pray, um, he prayed anyway. He's brought to trial in an American court. The jury listens to everything that's gone on, and they say, you know, you violated the law, but the law is an unjust law. You're acquitted. You you didn't do anything wrong because you're supposed to be able to pray according to the dictates of conscience.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

But if all they can review are are the facts, then they have to say, well, yes, you prayed, and then the judge gets to decide on the law. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 14:05

But you're saying the way we used to do it, but they could do both facts and it's the way they used to do it, juries were more important than the judge. And quite frankly, what would happen is any time the attorneys would argue about the points of law, they would never dismiss the jury. The jury's supposed to stay there and hear everything, every bit of evidence. Now, today we rule, oh, you can't let the jury hear the evidence, you can introduce this, you can't do that. No, back then they had to hear everything because the judge would have said, Why, Daniel, you violated the law. You're going to the lion's den. You've got to have a check and balance on the judge, and that was juries. Twelve jurors, 12 peers say, No way you're going to throw him in the lion's den for praying to God. There's no, and so it doesn't matter how much education the judge has, you got over here the check of the people, and that's the jury.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Well, uh, we missed that today, I'll tell you. The jury is really almost disdained.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

Well, see, what happened is in in about the 1890s, there in the 1890s, the Supreme Court came out with a new ruling and says, hey, from now on, juries are not going to look at the law anymore, they'll only look at facts. We judges are the professionals. We'll tell you what the law is. Now, at that point, your juries become a lot more insignificant. So when an attorney says, Hey, judge, I think the law's wrong and that, okay, dismiss the jury, get them out of the room, let's talk about this back and forth. And then you bring the jury back, you don't let them hear the law. And and and what happens is if the jury today does what juries did under the founding fathers, said, Hey, that's an unjust law, we're not going to convict on that. Then suddenly the judge says, Oh, missed trial, I'm the one who does the law, and you guys don't. You see, this is significant because in 1856, uh, Congress passed the fugitive slave law, one of the most abominable laws in history. It says if you're black and someone accuses you of having been a slave, even if you've been free your whole life, if I walk up and say, You used to be a slave, under that law, you instantly lost your constitutional right of habeas corpus, you lost your right to an attorney, constitutional right, you lost your constitutional rights simply because I said you used to be a slave. There was no due process, there was no examination, nothing at all. And so what happened is the law was so bad that the federal law says if a black is accused of of being a former slave and he comes into court and the judge finds that he was not a former slave, the judge gets paid five bucks. If the judge finds that he was a former slave, the judge gets pays ten bucks. So you're paying on incentivizing the judge to always find one of the people. So guess how many cases with judges they found the black to be not a former slave? Very it's like one percent. But the jury consistently freed people under that because they thought the law was unjust. You had Quakers, for example, that would help escape slaves in the South and get to the North and the Underground Railroad. They would take the Quakers and put them on trial for violating the fugitive slave law, and the jury would say, they didn't do anything wrong. The law's bad. And so the juries kept acquitting all these people. Now, see, then the courts come in 1892 and say, Oh, juries, you you got too much power. We need to limit your power. So they do that, and at that point, juries now become a lot less significant. And then we get to about 30, 40 years ago where we said, you know, now we we we don't even need juries deciding facts. Let's just do it before the judge, and and if you don't like the law, we'll just strike it down for you and we'll settle the dispute. Now, the problem with that is the use of juries as part of the due process clause of the Constitution, the fourth through the eighth amendments. Here's

Due Process Roots In Scripture

SPEAKER_03 17:06

where it gets really fun. These three books, I'm gonna pull right here, these are really big books. These and they these are old books too. This is from 1590. This is this one also comes out of the 1500s. This happens to be the 1794 edition. But this is called the Geneva Bible. It was the Bible that preceded the King James Version of the Bible. Uh, this particular Geneva Bible that we've got right here is from 1590. This is brought to America by one of the Puritan pilgrim families. But what makes the Geneva significant is that when you open the Geneva Bible up, on the inside, it is loaded with all these commentaries down the margins right there. See all that? Yeah. This is the writings of the reformers back in the day when they said, Hey, we've been away from the Bible for a thousand years. We've got lousy traditions. Time to get back to the Bible.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

So these are commentaries taking the scripture and uh and actually applying it.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

What they did was that we've had the culture wrong for a thousand years. It's time to go back to the Bible. So these are comments. One of the things they have tons of comments on is we've let the judicial system get away from what the Bible says. And it went, there was a trial of Jesus, there was the trials of Paul, there were trials throughout the Bible. They said, look at the policies you have with trials, look what God says about trials. And so these are all the comments here. Well, part of the problem with trials was the king would head the established church, and the king would say what the doctrine was, and if you said, We disagree with that doctrine, the king would put you to death. In the case of Wycliffe and Tyndall and Huss, they were burned at the stake because they simply put the Bible down in a common language where people could read it. Uh you have other people who were killed, the the pilgrims were persecuted because they didn't attend the church services of the church the king told them to go to. They had their own church. They had a home church, and the king says, Ah, you're going to be fined. Every Sunday, you don't go to my church. Uh so over and over you have people being tried because of their religious belief in courts. Now, the three courts in Britain that usually tried those guys were the Star Chamber courts, the courts of the High Chancery, and the Admiralty Courts. And in those courts, the judge had everything, and there was no other outside input. They would take testimony from people not sworn under oath. They would take hearsay testimony, it wouldn't even be direct testimony. You were not allowed to have an attorney to defend you. You were forced to incriminate yourself often by torture. Rick, do you believe this? No, I don't believe that. Well, I'll drive a stake through your hand and see if you believe it now. And so after enough torture, you'd confess to it. So all of this happens, and as a result, these reformers really criticize the English judicial system as a violation of scriptures. That's when King James came out with his Bible. Now here's, we're talking original King James here. This King James Bible comes out, and interestingly, it wipes out the commentaries. It doesn't want anybody complaining about what's going on. We've been doing this for a thousand years, let's just keep doing it. So you'll find that there's very little text differences in the King James from the Geneva. The text differences deal with judicial areas. In the trial of Jesus, and the trial of Paul and other trials, it doesn't read the same as the Geneva Bible did. It reads different. Now, the next thing that happens is these books right here. These books right here, these are really old. This this came out in the 1500s. This is called Fox's Book of Martyrs. Okay, and it's and it's got here and it shows the first martyrs being Jesus Christ and the apostles and etc. So it lists martyrs. It's two-volume set listing all these martyrs that happened. And consistently through here, they show these guys were martyred because of bad judicial process. They were martyred because the right judicial process was not used in the courts. So this is what they have in Great Britain. These three books here, when they come to America, they say, We're not doing this. We've had bad courts. The Fourth to the Eighth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, the due process clauses, are all based on these three books, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:36

So the very reason they put those protections in our Constitution. Juries especially. It all comes from the knowledge they had of these things.

SPEAKER_03 20:42

Of these examples, the witch trial. We always hear about the witch trial and how terrible that was, and 27 people put to death in the witch trial, and yeah, that's terrible. 27 people put to death. But there's something else about the witch trial we never talk about. And that is, three Christian ministers are the ones who got it stopped. They went to Governor William Phipps in Massachusetts. They said, Governor, look at the biblical rules of evidence to be used in courts of law. You're not doing that.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

These were pastors, these were pastors, John Wise and Chris Mather, and Thomas Sprotle. Because we're always taught when we're taught the story of the Salem Worcester, pastors are the bad guys.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Pastors are the bad guys. No, no. It was the government putting people to death. The pastors went to the to the governor and said, You've got to stop this. Governor called Samuel Sewell and said, Look, we've been violating the scriptures. We can't do this. They called an end to the trials. Sewell got up in church and repented. The governor called for a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, seeking to avert God's judgment. Pastors brought it into it. Now, the the significant thing is you had 27 people put to death in the Massachusetts witch trials. Hey, there were witch trials going in Europe at the same time. 500,000 put to death over there. See, this is what government was doing. It was the pastors who stepped in and said, no, no, no. We this is our heritage. We don't want this kind of stuff going in the courts.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

So wait, we our guys obviously were wrong for the 27.

SPEAKER_03 21:53

Well, the reason it wasn't 500,000.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Yeah, and then you compare that to 500,000, who was never correct. They never got the jury system right, they never came back in any way.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who is on the court, he is not a Christian, he's not a conservative. Even he says the due process clauses come out of the Bible, the due process clause of the Constitution. So when you look at the role of juries, juries were part of helping reach justice. And by the way, when the 1890s, when the court says, Oh, by the way, we don't need juries doing this anymore, we the judges will do it, do you know that's the first time ever we had courts of appeal in the United States? We never needed courts of appeal because the people were the final word. If the jury gave a ruling that you were innocent of something, it didn't go anywhere else. It stopped, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:31

I've already learned more in 30 minutes with you on the judiciary than I did in three years of law school, but let's still try to get one more question.

SPEAKER_03 22:36

Shouldn't

When Judges Turn Political

SPEAKER_03 22:37

our judges be neutral with no political agenda?

SPEAKER_02 22:41

So should the courts, or the judges, I guess, be influenced by the political process?

SPEAKER_03 22:45

Well, uh judges should be influenced by political process because it is not their duty to make law. It is their duty to enforce the laws, interpret the laws, not to decide whether they would have done the law differently. Um quite frankly, when you go back and a few years ago when all the stuff with war on terror was going, and Congress went to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution and says we are given the authority to make all the regulations for land and sea forces and for all the tribunals of those who are combatants against the U.S. And the court came up and said, Ah, we don't like that. We we think that they should be civil trials, and and so the court went through and rewrote what Congress did because the court didn't like it. They were settling a dispute, rather than the fact that their role is not to settle disputes. Congress makes the laws, and if Congress quotes explicit constitutional language to do it or did, and the court said, well, we don't like that. We want a different policy. No, no, no. That's making the court a political body. They're supposed to take their guidance from Congress, uphold that, enforce it. What the what the court has asked to do is, was the jury decided right? Was the law applied fairly? Not whether the law was up, up or down on good or bad. And see, that's where the court has really gotten out of bounds and turned itself into a political entity. I point back to the 2010 election. The people of Iowa really made themselves very clear on this. And in Iowa, after 161 years of marriage, meaning one man and one woman, by unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of Iowa said, Well, we think 161 years is wrong. We want something different. And so the people stepped up and there were retention elections that year. And out of the seven Supreme Court justices, three were up for retention election. In other words, you can check in or out. You just have an opponent, but you can vote no, I don't want this judge to come back. And I was interviewed a lot in that because I did several meetings in Iowa at the time, and and my line was real simple. Hey, these judges have just made themselves legislators. They're no longer judges. They decided to create policy out of thin air. I recommend that you send those three guys home so they can run for the legislature, because that's evidently where they want to be. So that wasn't that wasn't politics influencing the judge.

SPEAKER_02 24:51

That was that was the judges influencing and making policy. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 24:55

And and that is wrong. That is absolutely wrong. They're not to do that. Uh the Federalist papers right here, uh, the Federals, the question came up of will judges be able to make policy? And this book right here, the greatest commentary ever on the Constitution, written by guys who did the Constitution, and guys on the first Supreme Court, they said there's not a syllable in the Constitution that authorizes the judges to judge the spirit of the Constitution. No, no, they don't have a whit of authority to do that. And so when you have, like you do in so many states where you can elect judges or retain them, the people then do become the final authority. Judiciary is not to be an independent branch of the people, no way, shape, fashion, or form, and they're not to be the ones that shape politics. You know, that they had an election in Missouri where the people said, hey, we don't want this tax increase. A judge came in and said, Yes, you do want this tax increase, even though you voted down, and this is what your tax increase is going to be. Sorry, Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution says nobody can institute a tax increase except the House of Representatives. Not even the Senate, nor the President can increase taxes, only the House, and yet this judge says, But I want to increase the tax. I think there needs to be more money for education, so we're going to order a statewide tax on everyone. You have case after case after case of judge coming in, making policy, or not liking what the people decided, or not liking what the Congress did. Not a matter of it being unconstitutional. They call it unconstitutional because they don't like it, but then they implement their own opinions. And that is never, ever, ever to occur. Right back to this Constitution. The people are in charge of the government. They're in charge of all three branches. They're in charge of the judges as well.

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Thanks for listening

Final Takeaway And Closing

SPEAKER_02 26:24

today, folks. Many of you have the DVD set of the American Heritage Series. You could get the sequel, which is Building on the American Heritage Series. A lot of new material, some fantastic programs you want to have in your library. You can get it at our website today at wallbuilders.com.