cdn.ymaws.com/www.vba.org/resource/resmgr/vbaj/Pre2003/Vol_XXVIII_No_6_Sep_2002.pdf--Virgina Bar Association, Hon. D. Arthur Kelsey:
“In A Man for All Seasons, there is a scene where More’s wife Alice, his daughter Margaret and his son-in-law William Roper argue with More because he refuses to have a certain man arrested. The scene ends with this exchange:
Margaret: “Father, that man’s bad.
More: There is no law against that.
Roper: There is! God’s law!
More: Then God can arrest him.
Roper: Then you set man’s law above God’s!
More: No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact –I’m not God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can’t navigate. I’m no voyager. But in the thickets the law, oh, there I’m a forester. I doubt if there’s a man alive who could follow me there, thank God…
Alice: While you talk, he’s gone [the man you should arrest]!
More: And so he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
Roper: So now you ’d give the Devil benefit of the law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turn round on you– where would you hide, Roper, the law all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast– man’s laws, not God’s–and if you cut them down (and you’re just the man to do it) d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”…….
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| Rest in the Vine: A Man For This Season: Justice Benjamin Curtis and Our Constitution |
“Arafat gets endless second chances because the conscience of the West is doing what a conscience does: second-guessing the West’s own actions. That is why Arafat is always playing upon the conscience of the West, especially by his endless recourse to “international law” and invocation of “human rights,” an utterly brazen ploy coming from a terrorist. Law, in the democracies, is like a civic conscience, and like conscience, it is the bluntest of instruments. Because law, in democracies, is made by the people, it has their respect. Democratic citizens are prone to the illusory hope that the law can be applied successfully in international affairs between regimes regardless of whether they are democracies or tyrannies, strong or weak. The name for this hope is “international law.”–"Evil's Advantage Over Conscience" by Dr. Norman Doidge
Deborah The Judge: The Untold Truth Of The Bible Hero (Biblical Stories Explained) - YouTube
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| 'Jael Smote Sisera & Slew Him', James Jacques Joseph Tissot, c 1899 |
“Speaking as a foreigner myself, I’ve always found it one of the more charming features of the American scene that “progressives” are obliged to find justification for their radicalism in a piece of old parchment. In Europe, they can simply say: We need to get with the beat, daddy-o. But in the U.S. the Left at least observes the niceties and pretends that the powdered-wig guys had somehow ingeniously anticipated the need for a constitutional right to gay marriage or a partial-birth abortion. Perhaps recognizing that this particular penumbra is pretty well tapped out, Justice O’Connor is now saying that there’s gold in them thar Scandinavian hills. …In considering the pros and cons of sodomy in Texas, the Supreme Court did not rely on the large body of Nigerian sharia precedents and Taliban jurisprudence in this area. …
Given that this is the Court that elevated “Celebrate Diversity” from a bumper sticker to a bedrock constitutional principle, it’s a little bewildering to find that they cheerfully accord the white European a unique monopoly on the judicial consultancy positions. Heartening though it is to know the white man still has his uses, this privileged access is, alas, unwarranted. For one thing, the fact that the U.S. Constitution is older than the French, German, Italian, Greek, and Spanish constitutions combined suggests that this member of “the Western tradition” is more traditional than others. For another, can you imagine any judge in France, Denmark, or New Zealand taking U.S. court decisions into account when deliberating on, say, gun ownership or capital punishment?
Let me come at it this way. I love borders, the more the merrier — town lines, county, state, and, of course, national. Borders symbolize one of the few remaining constraints on government: You don’t like the grade school here in town? Move ten miles up the road. You don’t want to pay Vermont sales tax? Drive over the river and shop in New Hampshire. Arianna Huffington huffs against “tax loopholes for fat cats,” but I’d say the ability to rent a post-office box in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands is a “loophole” in one of the original 16th-century senses — an aperture to let in light and fresh air. The fact that there’s somewhere else to go to is the ultimate limitation on government. Borders give people choices — and, to put it in a bumper sticker, “I’m Pro-Choice and I Vote with My Feet.” When starry-eyed utopians speak of a “world without borders,” you can pretty much guess what kind of a place the one-world one-party state would be, with tax rates starting at more than 50 percent, where they are in Sweden right now.
That’s why Justice O’Connor’s indifference to jurisdictional integrity and partiality to foreigners is not just a kinky fetish but something philosophically incompatible with the job she’s meant to be doing. If you wanted to construct the precise opposite of the U.S. Constitution, it would look an awful lot like “international law.” The former is a document that limits the state’s grip on the people, the latter is designed to ensure they can never wiggle free, no matter where they go. “International law” is the new colonialism, the imposition on the world’s peoples of the moral certainties of a remote, unaccountable Western elite — indeed, one far less tolerant of local customs and culture than the old-school imperialists. The Europeans haven’t had much luck imposing their laws on Saudi Arabia and Sudan but, thanks to Justice O’Connor, other backward jurisdictions like Texas and Alabama are about to be whipped into line.” .......
Psalm 96
10
Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns;
Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved;
He will judge the peoples fairly.”
Amen, Lord Jesus!
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