Republican leaders and activists are found of claiming they want to follow the constitution as the founding fathers intended it 235 years ago. Many including those in Texas even want to reverse the 17th amendment which changed the method of selecting United States senators from being elected by the state legislatures to being elected directly by popular vote of the citizens of each state. Of course, their interpretation of the constitution and the founders’ intent is often self-serving and just cover for their own desires much as their bible interpretations so often are.
So in this week in which we celebrate the Declaration of
Independence which was written but a man who, while not among those who wrote
the constitution, did influence it through his discussions with those who did
write it, let us consider something else he wrote. Thomas Jefferson, flawed
individual and slaveholder, was a thoughtful, erudite man of his times. One of
his concerns about the constitution as expressed in a 1787 letter to William
Stephens Smith, son-in-law of John Adams, relates to the lifetime appointment
of members of the Supreme Court. “What we have lately read in the history of
Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me
against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been
disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish
kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life.” Lifetime
appointments when many of us now live into our 80’s and 90’s leave us with
appointees who now routinely serve for 25 years or more. In the days of the
founders far fewer survived even a decade on the bench. I don’t doubt that
there are some advantages to experience and wisdom but at the same time
spending so much of one’s life in such an elevated position often leads to a
loss of touch with the world that the rest of us live in and the changes that
have moved society forward.
In an excerpt from a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12,
1816 which is carved on the Southeast Portico of the Jefferson Memorial, Jefferson
is quoted: "I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and
constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress
of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new
discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change,
with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace
with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which
fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of
their barbarous ancestors."
Until as recently as 1986, when Antonin Scalia took his seat
on the bench, even Republican Supreme Court Justices considered the
constitution a living document which allowed them to address Jefferson’s
concerns without the upheaval and blood-shed of a revolution. Since then more
members of the misleadingly named Federalist Society have been appointed and
they’re anything but federalists in that they push against federal power
claiming the states should make the rules, such as in the recent case known as
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health the six member conservative majority rejected a
federal right to abortion in favor of allowing state legislatures to decide as
they may. Leaving gerrymandered and thus
conservative controlled states like to Texas to essentially outlaw abortions
even though the majority of Americans and likely Texans believes that abortions
should be legal.
Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 6, 2022
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