Tea at Trianon: Judicial Tyranny

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

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Judicial Tyranny

From Amuse on X:

The Founders were acutely aware of the dangers of judicial overreach. The Supreme Court itself, in Marbury v. Madison (1803), affirmed the doctrine of judicial review but was careful to delineate the limits of judicial authority. Federal courts can strike down executive actions that violate the Constitution or statutes, but they cannot commandeer executive functions or dictate how the President exercises discretionary power. The 1867 case Mississippi v. Johnson established that the judiciary has no authority to enjoin the President in carrying out his official duties, affirming that courts lack jurisdiction to direct the President’s discretionary decisions. This remains a bedrock principle of constitutional law—at least when judicial integrity prevails over partisan ambition.
The judges now waging war against President Trump are violating this precedent. Their rulings do not merely interpret the law but are designed to preemptively strangle his ability to govern. Consider the recent flurry of injunctions issued against Trump administration directives. These judges have blocked executive orders reining in regulatory overreach, impeded the administration’s efforts to reassert control over federal agencies, and even attempted to dictate personnel appointments within the executive branch—actions that the judiciary has no constitutional basis to undertake.
This phenomenon did not emerge overnight. For years, progressive legal strategists have cultivated an expansive theory of judicial interventionism. Nationwide injunctions—a judicial tool virtually unheard of before the Obama administration—have become a favored mechanism for obstructing executive authority. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), the Supreme Court struck down President Truman’s attempt to seize steel mills, but it did so within the narrow bounds of rejecting an unauthorized executive action. The modern judiciary, however, is no longer content with this case-by-case analysis. Instead, it wields broad injunctions to stall entire policy initiatives before they even take effect, rendering the executive functionally impotent. (Read more.)