In recent Court Watch Briefings, we have emphasized our obligation as Americans to ask of judicial nominees
the tough questions about their general philosophical views as well as
their positions on constitutional theory. As we’ve noted, such
questioning is our obligation because the courts themselves have injected these tough issues
into the heart of the constitution interpreting process. This judicial
injection has placed the courts squarely in the middle of the Culture
War engulfing America, and we Constitutionalists (advocates of the
Judeo-Christian worldview of law and the Constitution) must understand the philosophical underpinnings of both our worldview and the Humanistic worldview attacking us.
Basic philosophical musings are not the sort of activity in which
Americans have historically engaged. No Platos, Aristotles, or Hegels
appear in the landscape of American intellectual history. Americans do,
however, have a well-documented penchant for adapting abstract
philosophical ideas to the practical bits and pieces of everyday life. But now is the time for us to dive deeply into philosophy
Â more deeply than ever in our nation’s history Â in order to
understand our philosophical roots and defend them if we are to salvage
the honorable qualities of our practical, everyday life as a nation.
Some American leaders with more philosophical inclinations than most of
us have recognized the inseparability of a prosperous and peaceful
practical existence and the deeper philosophical levels of American
life. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who held many
notions dangerous to American life, was nevertheless on point when he
declared that “Theory is the most important part of the dogma of the
law, as the architect is the most important man who takes part in the
building of a house.” And our early great American lexicographer (and
also an attorney) Noah Webster agreed, stating that “next to theology, the study of jurisprudence (i.e., the ‘dogma of the law,’ our basic ‘philosophy of law’) is the most important and useful to man.”
Reconstructionist (i.e., Humanistic) judges are
rewriting our Constitution and revolutionizing our culture through
their injection of their “below-the-surface” philosophical views. We Constitutionalists can recapture our Constitution and culture only
if we become superior to our foe in understanding both our worldview
and theirs. In this, and later Briefings, we shall arm ourselves for
the battle by defining and describing both the Judeo-Christian and
Humanistic worldviews as they pertain to our jurisprudence and
constitutional theory and by defending the Judeo-Christian worldview as
the superior paradigm.
We begin this philosophical boot camp training by understanding that a “worldview” is a comprehensive set of views and values about all of life. A “Culture War”
is a climactic battle between opposing worldviews involving every
dimension of a society’s worldview. As it pertains to law, a worldview
consists of five realms of thought, forming the structure shown below.
Level #1: “Theology” concerns God Â His existence, nature, etc. “Religion” concerns man’s view of that which is supreme in his life and his relationship to that supreme entity.
Level #2A: “General philosophy” addresses such questions as
reality and existence, origins, truth and knowledge, man and society,
purpose(s), and values/principles/morality.
Level #2B: “Jurisprudence” (”legal philosophy”) and “political philosophy”
address the issues of law and government – their nature, source(s),
fundamental principles, relationship to other societal institutions,
etc.
Level #3: “The Constitution” includes the text of the document
plus the constitutional theory which one brings to his/her
consideration of the document, plus the body of court decisions
interpreting the document (”constitutional law”).
Level #4: “Specific issues and cases” of today includes issues such as evolutionism v. creationism, the life issues, religious freedoms, and homosexual rights.
Level #4 is the only portion of a worldview/law structure than most Americans understand
to any significant degree. But lest we make the dreadful mistake of
assuming that the other four components of a worldview are too abstract
to be of concern to “everyday Americans,” let’s consider how
Reconstructionist judges have attacked America’s Judeo-Christian
foundations in each of these realms of thought.
Level #1: In Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s case defending
the Ten Commandments monuments in the Judicial Building in Montgomery,
the federal district judge deciding against Moore and the monument
declared that he lacked “the expertise to formulate [the court’s] own
definition of religion” [this wasn’t the court’s business in the first
place]. (Glassroth v. Moore)
Therefore, the court rejected as “unwise and even dangerous” any effort
“to put forth, as a matter of law, one definition of religion under the
First Amendment.” Judicial involvement in defining “religion” is as
deep a court involvement in Level #1 as can be imagined.
Level #2A: In the Supreme Court’s signature case on evolutionism v. creationism (Edwards v. Aguillard),
the Court put its imprimatur on the public schools’ teaching of
evolutionism only (no creation science could be mandated). This puts
the Court squarely on the side of the worldview argument that men are,
by nature, animals. The nature of man is a central issue of general
philosophy.
Level # 2B: In the Casey decision upholding Roe v. Wade and Roe’s “undefinition” of “person” (”the word ‘person’ . . . does not include the unborn”), (Planned Parenthood of S.E. Pennsylvania v. Casey),
the Court’s plurality opinion devoted copious space and obvious mental
energy to pontificating that even if Roe were wrong, the Court couldn’t
reconsider it because Roe is an unassailable precedent. Only if the
Court leaves intact such unassailable precedents, will the Court retain
“its legitimacy” and its position as the ultimate spokesman of
America’s values. Court decisions become the ultimate law of our legal
system, a central issue of jurisprudence.
Level #3: In Lawrence v. Texas,
the Court read the right to homosexual conduct into the Fourteenth
Amendment’s Due Process Clause (specifically the term “liberty”
guaranteed by this Clause). This Reconstructionist attack on the clear
meaning of a constitutional provision typifies Humanistic assaults on
America’s constitutional theory.
In the early years of the Reagan era, columnist Joseph Sobran
wrote that conservatives
were losing battles because they were “philosophically incompetent and
intellectually unsophisticated.” Would Sobran’s characterization fit us
Constitutionalists today? We Constitutionalists rise above this
description when we understand the law and worldview truths of this and
later Briefings.
Source: EagleForum.org. Used with permission.
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