Tea at Trianon: A Judicial Putsch

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, June 29, 2015

A Judicial Putsch

From Tom Piatak at Chronicles:

As Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his dissent, “If an unvarying social institution enduring over all of recorded history cannot inhibit judicial policymaking, what can?” In his dissent, Justice Scalia charged that Kennedy’s opinion lacked “even a thin veneer of law” and constituted a “judicial Putsch.” And as Justice Alito noted in his dissent, “Today’s decision shows that decades of attempts to restrain this Court’s abuse of its authority have failed.”

John Adams famously wanted a “government of laws and not of men.” Today’s decision is yet the latest illustration of how far we are from that ideal. Indeed, in practical terms, the Constitution means whatever the swing vote on the Supreme Court says it means. That vote now belongs to Anthony Kennedy. And if you turn on most news programs or read most newspapers today, you will see little criticism of this state of affairs. Instead, you will encounter hosanna after hosanna to Anthony Kennedy and his decision. (Read more.)