Central to Democracy Is a Centrist Judiciary

Letter to Ephesians: Retired Justice Kennedy lambasted a hostile host of judiciary critics, especially those infuriated by universal TROs issued like popcorn by liberal judges, reminding how “central” judges are to our democracy & how it’s viewed worldwide. But Judge(s), also heal thyself?

As the Fox News story notes, Kennedy was a Reagan appointee who retired in 2018 during President Trump’s first term. Speaking at a “virtual forum about threats to the Rule of Law,” he naturally & rightly “defended the [‘central’] role of judges in a democracy & advocated for the need to protect them & their families from threats” that the US Marshall’s office says have been increasing at an alarming rate. Kennedy particularly called for a return to civil “discourse” on the issues dividing the nation. Without mentioning No. 47 & as a for instance, he called attention to the Trump Administration’s aggressive verbal campaign against local judges effectively shutting down the MAGA electoral mandate with nationwide TROs.

What the conservative Justice didn’t so candidly call out, however, was that his colleagues on the left have consistently overridden Trump’s policies in favor of Democratic policies in an unprecedented flurry of injunctions supposedly based on the “Rule of Law” but arguably based on judicial overreach in order to reach a political rather than legal end. The progressives’ use of forum shopping in this scenario has gotten so bad that the current High Court has finally begun to reign in this widely perceived judicial abuse in a series of long overdue opinions & decisions. On Friday, a 6-3 majority even found it necessary to enjoin nationwide injunctions in a high-profile immigration case that the WSJ opines will likely have a far-reaching impact in other areas of law & politics. If so, it’s about time Justice Kennedy’s call for “discourse” got the attention of the High Court. Shouldn’t being politically neutral have been “talked through” long ago by our judiciary that’s so “central to democracy”?

Davd Soul