Then there was the time that Sir Winston Churchill flattened the rather lofty self-regard of his colleague, Sir Stafford Cripps, observing, "There but for the grace of God, goes God." Then again, he would occasionally rearrange the letters of Cripps' name and refer to him as "Sir Stifford Crapps," which added just enough ballast to bring any pompous ego back down to earth. Cripps was both a lawyer and a politician, which was damage enough. Had he thrown on that old black magic robe and become a judge, he would have gone beyond all reason, his intellectual tonnage sloshing over the brim of human modesty.
One act of irresponsible hubris is an anomaly, after all. Two is a trend. Add in a judicial robe, and it becomes an everlasting catastrophe. A popular vote, an electoral mandate, or even a democratic uprising means nothing to this class of self-appointed experts and unelected philosopher-kings who neither suffer the consequences of their prescriptions, nor give a fig about those who do suffer.
It's all about process, see, as Professor Malcolm M. Feeley so aptly spelled out in the title of his 1979 book, "The Process Is the Punishment." The machinations of the judicial-industrial complex must function according to the ever-growing labyrinth of rules and exceptions, no matter the outcome. In the event justice occurs, it is purely incidental to the process.
Legal experts and practitioners for whom process is everything should note that 113 years ago this month, all the mechanical systems and aesthetic processes were humming smoothly along as the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, killing nearly 1,500 people. You see, at some point, someone high up the food chain should be paying attention to the direction of the ship rather than myopically fixating on nanoscopic niceties and prescribed processes.
In fact, the road to hell is paved with niceties, proper decorum, and ubiquitous processes, as we saw in California, where officials were careful to adhere to every jot and tittle of the latest environmentally friendly prescriptions to care for creatures living in the forest. They forgot, however, what happens when enough dried forest debris is allowed to pile up that it becomes deadly fuel for a lightning strike or errant match to turn the forest into a raging wildfire that devours everything and everyone in its path.
Indeed, we could conclude that too many in various legal circles have become like those officials in California who are busy fussing over the trees whilst ignoring the forest fire. They see district court judges around the country usurping Article II executive powers in order to nullify the will of the people as expressed in the last election. The consequences for communities throughout the country are deadly dangerous, yet like Nero, the "process" crowd continues fiddling while these unelected "Robed Regents" (h/t Mark Steyn) disassemble a national mandate.
Soon, we will see the election of a new pope who will also take on a new name. A writer who goes by the name of Trad West on X offers the following perspective on this name change:
When a cardinal is elected pope, he's asked: "By what name shall you be called?"
This marks the moment he lays aside his old identity and takes on the mantle of the Successor of Peter, much like when Simon became Peter, or Saul became Paul.
It's not just a title, is a prophetic sign.
Does a similar metamorphosis take place when a mere mortal dons a judge's black robe? Does he shed the limitations of mere mortals and assume demigod status—half human, half divine, and 100 percent insufferable? How else to explain the immense hubris and stupid audacity it takes for an unelected jurist to assume the duties of a head of state, directing foreign policy, setting the standards of military readiness for our Armed Forces, suspending the executive obligation to protect American citizens under the Alien Enemies Act, decreeing that an illegal alien with two immigration hearings and a deportation order under his belt must be flown back into the country for yet more due process, deciding that those who willfully avoided due process coming into the country must now have more due process than their victims, or blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from terminating $14 billion in Biden-era climate grants that are sitting in a Citibank account?
But wait! There's more, because now we hear that federal district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has blocked President Trump's executive order requiring proof of U.S. citizenship in order to vote in federal elections. Monotone analysts and lawyers who drone on continuously about the minutiae of process would do well to raise their heads long enough to consider the direction in which the ship of state is traveling, because it is 180 degrees out of phase with the direction that a decisive majority of American voters mandated. The much-vaunted process is not a national suicide pact, and That Old Black Magic Robe does not confer demigod status, nor does it render the wearer infallible. How we got here in the first place will be the subject of Part II.
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