By Douglas V. Gibbs
The Founding Fathers feared judicial tyranny. They had watched British judges operate as little more than a rubber stamp for the Crown and Parliament, enforcing political will rather than the law. That experience shaped the debates at the Constitutional Convention, where some delegates even argued against creating a federal judiciary at all. A federal court system ultimately prevailed only because disputes between states, maritime cases, and controversies involving the federal government required it.
Even then, the Framers rejected the idea that the courts should be the final arbiters of the law or the Constitution. Judicial review, as we now know it, was not granted in the Constitution. The concept was discussed, and rejected on the floor of debate. However, it was later asserted by Chief Justice John Marshall in his judicial opinion regarding Marbury v. Madison (1803). Over time, political elites and the legal class accepted that assertion, and the judiciary gradually elevated itself above the other branches.
As a result, we have drifted into the same trap the colonists faced under the British Empire: believing that a black robe confers superior wisdom and that judges exist to define the law rather than apply it.
The Rule of Law is not merely a collection of statutes or the text of the Constitution. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, it is grounded in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The Rule of Law is a moral and legal order that pre-exists government and stands above the will of rulers, judges, or shifting public opinion. It is a framework rooted in objective moral reality, binding on both the governed and those who govern. It is the law not invented by man but discovered by him. It is a moral order observable in human nature and the natural order of things. It is Divine Law, which is a transcendent moral authority acknowledged by the Founding Fathers as the ultimate source of rights and duties. The Rule of Law is not whatever a legislature enacts or a judge declares. It is the alignment of human law and the pre-existing moral architecture of the universe and of the Creator Himself.
Human law is legitimate only when it aligns with that pre‑existing moral architecture. Legislatures cannot redefine it. Judges cannot override it. Government cannot replace it.
To understand the Rule of Law through an originalist lens one must recognize that human nature contains fixed truths, and law must be anchored in those truths. Government is not the creator of rights, but the guardian of rights that come from God. Natural rights are fixed, and government’s role is limited and knowable. Equality before the law flows from a universal moral source. No person, class, or judge stands above it. Legitimate authority arises only from the people, who delegate limited powers to government to secure their natural rights.
Moral order comes first. Political order must follow, and remain subordinate.
The Rule of Law collapses when the Constitution is treated as a “living” document rather than the fixed compact it was designed to be. It collapses when precedent replaces principle, or when natural rights are redefined by elite opinion rather than natural law. The Constitution embodies a natural‑law framework; its meaning is fixed because the truths it rests upon are fixed.
The Rule of Law is fidelity to those moral limits on government. Limits that exist to secure God‑given rights.
Once a society abandons the Rule of Law, and succumbs to the Rule of Man presented by activist politicians and tyrannical judges the descent is swift, and it doesn’t take very long before the culture begins to metaphorically dance around a golden calf.
Judges begin ruling from ideology rather than law. Universal injunctions become political weapons. Courts and legislators attempt to micromanage, seeking predetermined outcomes instead of applying objective legal standards. Political factions use the judiciary to sabotage opponents, discarding constitutional boundaries in pursuit of ideological victory. Judicial philosophy evaporates because the judges themselves no longer believe in one.
Such interference violates the separation of powers and reduces the Rule of Law to an archaic relic. Truth becomes relative. Power, not principle, becomes the currency of governance.
When the Rule of Man replaces the Rule of Law, the constitutional order that once secured American liberty becomes poisoned and discarded, leaving only a path toward tyranny, decay, and the eventual destruction of liberty.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
