Article by Guest Author: Tim Keller – President of the Blue Water Tea Party
Special Guest Speaker: Professor William Wagner
How dangerous is it to chip away at the judiciary’s legitimacy in a free Republic? Have you ever wondered what the Founding Fathers intended for the judicial branch? Professor William Wagner, a former federal judge and founder and president of Salt & Light Global spoke at the May meeting of the Blue Water Tea Party. His presentation, “Judicial Power: Original Intent vs. Reality” focused on the importance of the Rule of Law as a distinguishing feature between developing nations and nations that maintain more stable economies.
One of his most insightful statements was the following: “Why do you think many of these developing nations continue to be developing nations over all these years? Because their judiciary has no legitimacy. Whoever pays the judge the biggest bribe gets the decision. Where there’s no rule of law, are you going to come in and invest millions of dollars to help build an infrastructure of a nation? No! And so we begin to see: the only thing the judiciary has to carry out its role is the legitimacy of ‘We the People’; the legitimacy that we give their decisions. And so now, can you begin to see the beginnings of why it is very important that the judge maintain a role of only deciding a dispute – taking the law as they get it – as opposed to making the law up as they go along? …What happens to a nation, if the majority of the nation no longer can trust the judiciary to resolve disputes under the law? …Every time the court [takes the role of making the law into their own hands] they chip away at the legitimacy that they have in our federal Republic. How dangerous is that, though, overall, to our nation’s freedom in the long run?”
