What is an Oligarchy?
What is an Oligarchy?
I’ll try to apply it…
Seeing how our courts over the last 50 years or so have started to become more activist in their rulings, many are saying that our democratic republic initiated by our founding fathers is turning into one. What does that mean? By sheer observation of the news, I see that it is a way to pass a law without public approval or going through the legislative process (remember the ruling that the pledge of allegience was unconstitutional?) This is a trend that many simply call judicial tyranny and are saying enough is enough.
This possibility was not new to the founders and they had this to say…
speaking of our ‘then’ new government and Constitution and ‘the pivots upon which the whole machine must move’…
“That these Powers (as the appointment of all Rulers will for ever arise from, and, at short stated intervals, recur to the free suffrage of the People) are so distributed among the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches, into which the general Government is arranged, that it can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an Oligarchy, an Aristocracy, or any other despotic or oppressive form, so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the People.”
George Washington February 7, 1788
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“To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.” –Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
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Tags: Politics
