Every once in a while, a court ruling can be infuriating, even when the ruling is legally and indisputably correct.
In a particular example, I once encountered a lady whose husband of twenty-plus years had divorced her to marry a younger “trophy bride.” In the divorce settlement, the lady got nothing. Bear in mind that she had foregone her own professional ambitions, and sacrificed much of her health, to support her husband in his endeavors. She had made possible his financial success. Yet the former husband’s sizable wealth was ruled to be exempt from alimony by law (a law later repealed, but too late for her).
The injustice was acute, but the law is the law.
This brings us to a recent court ruling that the political left deems outrageously unjust.
It involves “the DOJ’s cancellation of ... nearly $800 million in grants for programs supporting violence reduction and crime victims.” The judge upheld the right of the Department of Justice to claw back the grants.
What is of particular note in this case is that the judge himself “described the DOJ’s actions as ‘shameful’ in his ruling.” Yet the judge ruled correctly, because, as he said according to Fox News, “the court lacked jurisdiction and the organizations had failed to state a constitutional violation or protection.” Would that more judges had his commendable judicial restraint.
What many people do not understand is that judges are required to rule according to what the law says, not according to what is fair. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. is said to have affirmed, “This is a court of law, not a court of justice.” Chief Justice John Jay is said to have remarked that his duty was to enforce the rules, not to be fair.
Although that seems cold-blooded, it properly places the enforcement of fairness in the hands of the representatives of the voters. You, through your elected legislators, mold the law into rules that are fair and just, moral and decent. If you think that is merely a lofty sentiment without practical value, consider the opposing view.
Supreme Court justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson seems to believe that her personal opinions of fairness should overrule the law, which she has described dismissively as “legalese.” While opposing the executive orders of the current president as “imperial,” she would displace him with an “imperial court,” according to Justice Amy Coney Barrett. However, Jackson did not apply such a rebellious standard to the former president, whose personal opinions aligned with hers.
Clearly, then, the opinions that must be enforced are those written into law by the elected Legislature. Those are the opinions that must be enforced by the president. The courts must rule only on the laws as they are, not as any particular judge would like to rewrite them.
All of this is necessary if we are to remain a republic, ruled not by men, but by laws.
The general public, including many conservatives, has little understanding of that, which is an indictment of our educational system, and of the parents who are supposed to be running that system.
Wives should not be cast aside to be replaced by trophies. It’s unfair. After the fact, however, there is probably no remedy for what happened to the poor lady I mentioned. Charles Dickens’s Mr. Bumble was right: “The law is an ass,” at least at times, but it is an ass that must be obeyed.
As an addendum, those federal grants earmarked for noble causes frequently go to ignoble causes, or are simply wasted. Whenever possible, and legal, they must, in all fairness, be rescinded. But that’s only my personal opinion. KBJ might disagree.
Image via Picryl.