Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous, Part 1: Texas v. White (1869)

It might seem that a Supreme Court case that happened more than a hundred fifty years ago is not what most people would consider to be a contemporary issue. You, dear reader, may even be inclined to ask, “Why is this Ashton character digging up such an old issue?

For some reason the good People of the United States of America have decided that the decisions of the Supreme Court are the forever binding supreme law of the land; forever and always and in all possible things. You have the choice to trust me when I say that there is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes any five, or six, or seven, or eight, or nine people—however the vote may be—to decide what ultimate and binding legal truth is for everybody regarding everything, over and above the will of the American People as expressed by their president and elected representatives in Congress. For them to do so would make this country an oligarchy. Should you choose to not trust me in this you could always read it for yourself and point out the clause that proves me wrong.

It is not the point of this article to debate or discuss the subject matter of the previous paragraph. The point of this article, and the entire Supreme Court Series, is to show that the Supreme Court, in deciding what is “constitutional” or “unconstitutional,” is not using the Constitution to come to the conclusion prescribed by the supreme law of the land, which they are sworn by oath to uphold. Instead what they are doing is deciding what ruling they want to have forever encoded as law, as determined by them, then looking to other documents that sound sort of constitutional which happen to say something similar to what they think should be the supreme and binding law, then calling that constitutional.

Thus, an issue of a hundred and fifty years ago, one involving the right of the States to secede from the Union, is an issue of today in its effect. No longer, because of this ruling, does a State have the right to say, “The federal government has gone completely daft, is running out of control off a cliff and we refuse to blindly and blithely go over the cliff with them. We’re out of here!” Today, because of this decision, any State choosing to exercise the same principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence would be looked at as treasonous criminals.

And that decision, Texas v. White (1869), was not made according to anything in the Constitution or any constitutional law.

So, the groundwork, from big to small:

1) Article Six, Clause Two; “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land….”

2) Article Three Section Two; “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution….”

3) The Supreme Court Justice Oath of Office; “I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as _________ under the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

With these two laws and oath we can see that the Supreme Court is bound by the Constitution. It is not bound by anything other than the Constitution. By definition of the word “constitutional” with the “-al” suffix is meant “having to do with the Constitution.”

I would not think that one would have to explain that for something to be constitutional it would have to be something actually contained in the Constitution as a written and authorized power; it seems a rather obvious and common sense thing—but there it is.

The case of Texas v. White is hundreds of pages of boring and dry reading that contains nothing but senseless gibberish, which I would not do you the injustice of forcing you through. What you need to know is it involves money that either should be paid if secession is unconstitutional or not be paid if secession was constitutional.

The Chief Justice of the Court at the time was Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln during the “Civil War.” Also serving on the court was Justice David Davis whose previous claim to fame was as Lincoln’s campaign manager.

The Court returned a decision 5-3 that it was unconstitutional for a State to secede from the Union.

Big surprise!

The United States Supreme Court, composed mostly of people who were from Northern States, led by the guy who funded Lincoln’s war against the seceding States which slaughtered hundreds of thousands of American People, declared proudly that he had every right to do so because those filthy Confederates were behaving unconstitutionally.

In other news gravity still works.

Now just for fun please, I invite you to imagine that it is the year 1868, just at the beginning of the Reconstruction Era, barely three years after the end of the so-called “Civil War.” The Union soldiers are still in forceful occupation of the former Confederate States. The ashes of destruction waged against the People of the Southern States have barely cooled. Poverty and starvation is rampant in the American South. The Confederate soldiers have all been stood down and their rifles have barely just begun to rust in the dirt.

Suppose on that day that the Supreme Court Chief Justice—who served in Lincoln’s cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury and funded the “Civil War,” along with the other guy who was Lincoln’s campaign manager—would have decided that it was completely constitutional for the Confederate States to secede from the Union. The vote shifts from 5-3 unconstitutional for the States to secede and thus Lincoln was right in killing the filthy Confederates; to 5-3 it was completely constitutional for the Confederate States to secede, the Confederates did absolutely nothing wrong in leaving the Union and thus Lincoln was unjustly waging war on the South and behaving as any psychotic tyrant.

Okay kiddies! Can you say, “conflict of interest”? Sure, I knew you could.

They would have been lynched. Riots in the streets. The former Confederate States would have seceded, again, the very next day, and there would have been nothing the Union could have legally done about it. And that’s what they were really deciding.

Chief Justice Chase was faced with a problem. There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution that says a State can’t leave the Union. Nothing. Either trust me or look for yourself. It just isn’t there. So he had to find—because his actual physical life probably depended on it, after all, they did just put a bullet through the president’s head—something else that he could sell and convince the People that he was drawing from an actual legally binding text while making a convincing argument that it was the Constitution he was talking about.

What he settled on was this; “The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to ‘be perpetual.’ And, when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained ‘to form a more perfect Union.’”

This is the only important paragraph in the whole decision, which numbers in hundreds of pages. Look what it says there. The Articles of Confederation is where he got the justification for his argument; not the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation “were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country.” And from this >>>inadequate document<<< he takes two words. (Two effing words!!!) And by those two effing words from an obsolete and no longer legally binding document he makes the argument that it is unconstitutional for a State to exercise the simple freedom of leaving the country when remaining presents a danger to them.

Two words written years before the Constitution changed the whole course of American History and probably saved the lives of two Supreme Court justices.

The Supreme Court, to begin with, has no expressed constitutional authority to make such a decision. The 10^th Amendment applies. And to make a “constitutional” decision from something outside of the Constitution itself cannot be considered to be legally binding or Constitutional.

More than all of that this is why the Supreme Court does not and should not ever have the power that the American People assume that they have.

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part One

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Two

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Three

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Four

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Five