"An Unjust Law is No Law at All"
How our judicial branch is NOT restoring balance to society
The scales of justice not only represent equal treatment under the law and weighing facts/evidence to arrive at a verdict, it symbolizes the “duty to restore balance to society.”
Say that again. Or what is fair and equitable no long matters to those in power.
On this morning, Friday, June 28, 2024, I hoped to wake up on the west coast to news from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) that would completely erase the news from last night’s presidential debate. Instead the SCOTUS news that I am waiting for will presumably be announced Monday morning. According to our friends at SCOTUS blog, Chief Justice Roberts announced today that Monday would indeed be that last day of the term before summer recess.
Until then, I am avoiding political chatter because I refuse to let all of the punditry about last night’s debate destabilize my emotions and throw me off-balance for the weekend. Though there is nothing on this weekend’s docket that I particularly need to be oh-so steady for.
But how ‘bout I just don’t want to be destabilized and thrown off-balance, period?
It seems as if this iteration of SCOTUS doesn’t seem to care about my stability at all nor the stability of the nation. Again for the record, I am not liberal or conservative. What I am concerned about are the laws that govern us and the stability of our government. Our government of not-so-invincible checks and balances.
In case you haven’t figured it out, the ruling that I and the remainder of the country are restlessly anticipating involves the matter of presidential immunity in Trump vs. United States. Yet this specific case is not what prompted me to speak on this particular aspect of justice. It was the ruling in the emergency abortion case of Idaho vs. United States. The case was dismissed as improvidently granted. What?! Improvidently granted? What exactly does that mean?
Improvident means lacking foresight. The Supreme Court of the United States, what should be the most revered body of impartiality and judgment the world has ever known lacks foresight?? How could this be? Admittedly I have not followed the Court this closely ever. While I could look it up, I don’t know how many cases have been improvidently granted. Quite frankly, I don’t want to know how many cases they agreed to take up but then turned around and said oops.
It's a particular affront that they agreed to take a case that has literal life and death consequences. Sat on it for five months only to dismiss it as improvidently granted. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred with the dismissal in part and dissented in part. Though I marked up many of the salient points in Justice Jackson’s opinion, I will spare you every single line that I think you should be aware of and only share these few lines of text that, in my opinion, best sum up her opinion.
“So, as of today, the Court has not adopted Idaho's farfetched theories—but it has not rejected them either. Instead, the Court puts off the decision. But how long must pregnant patients wait for an answer? Until we confront the pending petition that the Government filed with us after the Fifth Circuit enabled Texas's flouting of EMTALA? Until these very cases return to us in a few years? Will this Court just have a do-over, rehearing and rehashing the same arguments we are considering now, just at a comparatively more convenient point in time? Or maybe we will keep punting on this issue altogether, allowing chaos to reign wherever lower courts enable States to flagrantly undercut federal law...”
Talk about chaos and instability. Don’t get me wrong, improvidently granting cases is not the only way to perpetuate chaos. Improvidently deciding them does as well, even more so. Whatever the form, improvident should not be a term associated with the highest court of the land. Nor should terms like fear, favor, cowardice, gamesmanship, unjust, dishonorable, etc, be associated with the court. Our highest court as well as our entire judiciary should be held in the highest esteem because it consistently proves itself not only to provide checks and balances to all facets of our government but the judiciary serves as the restorer of balance to society when we have lost our way.
Yet the public does not view our judiciary as such. Confidence in the Supreme Court and the judiciary overall continues to diminish. It appears that the court at all levels has decided to only be concerned with the letter of its responsibility instead of the spirit of its responsibility. With the letter being, the judicial branch decides the constitutionality of federal laws and resolves other disputes about federal laws. Whereas the spirit of the judiciary is to mete out justice.
Which to me begs the question, is there a difference between what is considered unconstitutional and what is considered unjust? The two are not synonymous, though we would like them to be; though we infer that they are synonymous. We seem to have this mindset in this country that if we can make something legal or make the determination that something is not illegal that it is fair game. Legal and just are not synonymous either. Yet justice is one of the cornerstones of our democracy.
With liberty and justice for all. Right?
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice… Right?
What’s the judiciary supposed to do with a constitutionally unjust law? How can an unjust law be law at all? St. Augustine says it can’t. Yet and still we have unjust laws and SCOTUS will essentially tell Congress to go back to the drawing board. That is if the Court is justice-minded to begin with. Meanwhile society are the lucky winners of perpetual chaos and tension. As much as we bemoan how divided we are as a nation, we tend to overlook what truly alleviates the tension and brings about peace.
True peace is not merely absence of tension. It is the presence of justice.
~Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Nevertheless our government toys with justice. We’re not supposed to punt it and wish for a future bolder generation to mete it out. Our judiciary is not supposed to be vainglorious and seek to write for the ages as Justice Gorsuch declared. To which former Attorney General, Eric Holder, responded that the court's role is not to write for the ages but to decide cases. We are supposed to have judges that are wise, fair, and justice-minded enough to rule NOW.
Justice delayed is justice denied. All is NOT well that ends well, if it ends well at all. The Idaho case is a clear and recent example of this. And if all the prognostication proves correct, the Idaho case also foreshadows what we can expect in the presidential immunity ruling—more restlessness, chaos, and delay. Even if the Court manages to decide correctly on presidential immunity, that means they imbued upon us needless restlessness, chaos, and delay.
They even needlessly burdened themselves because they could have refused to take the case and let the lower court’s ruling stand. After all, the reason we have appellate courts in the first place is to alleviate the burden on the Supreme Court. It would seem to me that if we had a justice-minded Court, they would recognize the just rulings of the lower courts and the providential care the lower courts took to not burden them. But it appears that a justice-minded court is not what we have right now.
Nonetheless, we shall see what the end will be on Monday. But what I know today is we deserve a judiciary that doesn’t make us question its commitment to restoring and maintaining balance in society.
Onward to swift justice and Harmonious Balance my friends,
Johanna
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