Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous, Part 3: Everson v. Board of Education (1947)

This, as it is titled above, is the third in the series of posts regarding how the Supreme Court makes its rulings. How they are not constitutional. How they do not have the constitutional authority to make many of their rulings. When they do have proper authority and don’t like the decision they have to make, as per the Constitution, they use sources of opinion having nothing to do with the actual text of the Constitution itself, choosing whatever source of opinion they think supports their own views on what they think the law should be. Also they frequently have personal and political conflicts that guide their decisions.

Let me recap the previous two posts.

In Texas v. White (1869) the Supreme Court didn’t like the idea that they had to rule—as per the text of the Constitution—that there was nothing that made it so a State couldn’t unilaterally secede from the Union. This was within four years of the end of the “Civil War” and had the justices—several of who had conflicts of interest, the Chief Justice particularly, served as Secretary of Treasury under Lincoln and another of the justices was Lincoln’s very own campaign manager—ruled according to the actual text of the Constitution they’d likely have started a second wave of States seceding. In order to make this ruling they had to invoke a grand total of two words, “perpetual union,” from the obsolete and no longer legally binding Articles of Confederation.

This landmark ruling established the idea that the Supreme Court can grab whatever they want; legally binding law, obsolete law or whatever quotes from whoever’s opinion happened to agree with their own, and call it constitutionally established law.

In Reynolds v. United States (1878) they continued this practice by invoking a personal letter, rather than debated and duly passed law, from a past president—Thomas Jefferson—who was a founding father but was not even in the country when the Constitution or the First Amendment was debated, written or ratified. This is the first time the Supreme Court mentioned Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and State.” While I agree with their decision, based on my own moral orientation, I don’t see under the Tenth Amendment where they, as part of the federal government, have any authority to decide what a marriage should be. The same applies to the law they were ruling in favor of—Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act—is a violation of the same Amendment. While I disagree with Reynolds’ actions I also think he was correct in saying it was also a violation of the First Amendment.

The thing that makes it a current issue is that the Supreme Court, in invoking Jefferson’s wall of separation between church and State, made the opinion of one man a precedent that following Courts would use to undermine religious rights across the entire country. The arguments courts keep making because of this arbitrary quote by one man, president and Founding Father though he was, continue to step on the religious rights of the People of this country to this very day. And I can’t help but notice that they picked Jefferson’s quote for this, rather than some of the quotes from a more religious Founding Father like John Adams.

So now we come to the case of Everson v. Board of Education. This case comes down to one simple thing, which again the Supreme Court took hundreds of pages of pure gibberish to explain. I can explain it in fifty words or less.

New Jersey passed a law providing funding for transportation of students to private schools. Many (96%) of those private schools were Catholic. Everson didn’t like this and thought it violated the First Amendment. It doesn’t. The First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law….” New Jersey isn’t congress.

There you have it. Forty-eight words. At least that’s how and why I think they should have ruled. I could expand on it a bit, should I feel so inclined, and point out that under the Tenth Amendment it is New Jersey’s business alone what they do with their money. I could also expand on the point that the First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” and that New Jersey is not the federal Congress of the United States, to which the discussed amendment applies.

My objection to this case, again, does not lie in the ruling itself; that New Jersey’s funding for transportation of students was not unconstitutional, even if the buses were taking kids to Catholic schools. My objections are that it should never have gotten to the Supreme Court to be ruled on in the first place because it is not a federal issue and it invokes the Jeffersonian “wall of separation between church and State,” making it again seem to some observers of the Court to be a legally binding constitutional precedent which has to be followed as law.

To provide proof and demonstrate this line of reasoning we need only to look at the Reynolds v. United States ruling invoked within this ruling itself.

“Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups, and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and State.’ Reynolds v. United States, supra, at 98 U. S. 164.”

Again we have the Supreme Court going outside of the Constitution citing one man’s undebated opinion as if it were law. By citing the previous ruling they establish a line of precedent to it which later courts are inclined to follow.

Now let’s, just for the fun of it, set all of that aside for a moment. There is nothing within the Constitution that gives the Supreme Court the authority over the courts, legislators, governors and People of the States regarding a State level issue. The idea that the votes of nine, eight, seven, six or five people can decide, over and above everybody else, what is or is not a valid law is laughable in its level of absurdity. That this small handful of people can determine the fates of the country and everybody in it based on their own political prejudices and misunderstanding is a travesty of justice of the worst kind.

When they make irrational decisions outside of their authority they should be ignored by the States and the other two branches of the federal government. They have no independent power to enforce their rulings.

Outside of that one specific case that they are ruling on their opinions should be ignored. That they ruled something once a long time ago should have no bearing on anything outside of that specific case, now or in the future.

That’s the only authority the Constitution actually grants them. Their authority is to rule on individual cases, not the entire country because of a case.

I would say that so many in the country thinking otherwise, being willing to follow them blindly off the edge of a cliff, is reminiscent of lemmings but it's much worse than that. It is the willingness to follow them knowing full well, and with eyes wide open, that it is wrong and can only lead to destruction, based on nothing more than the idea that because they said so, it must be so, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

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