Supreme Power

Of all the books I've read this year, I might have learned the most from Ted Stewart's book Supreme Power. In this book, Stewart examines seven decisions made by the Supreme Court of the United States and how those decisions changed the course of our country. He also discusses how each of those decisions granted more and more power to the Supreme Court, or more appropriately, to five members of the Supreme Court. Such power was never intended by the original founders of the nation.

I learned that there are two main ways for a Supreme Justice to interpret the Constitution. The first is to interpret it according to the original intent of its writers (which the author acknowledges is not always an easy feat). Such an approach will examine not only the text of the document, but also the writings and commentary of its Framers. This approach coincides with the Rule of Law. The other approach is to interpret the text according to the current social trends of society or views of the Justice. This approach is a slippery path to tyranny.

The saddest chapter in the book focuses on the Plessy v. Ferguson case, in which the Supreme Court sanctioned racism and paved the way for the infamous Jim Crow laws. The author does an excellent job of immersing the reader in the time period and all that was going on. He doesn't just talk about the case, but talks about everything leading up to it. Because of the Supreme Court's decision to uphold a state's "separate but equal" law, African Americans have suffered a second slavery. The effects of this decision did not end with the Civil Rights movement, but continue to be felt today.

Another crazy case was Wickard v. Filburn, in which a man was forbidden by law to grow more than 12 acres of wheat. Despite the fact that most of this wheat was for the man's personal consumption, and that of his animals, it was ruled that he was jeopardizing interstate commerce because he would not be buying from other farmers. Because of this precedent, the author argues that the government can limit the number of cookies a family is allowed to bake, because they won't be buying cookies from the store and will be hurting the economy that way. As outrageous as this might sound, there were many examples of the Supreme Court making a decision, people warning about the possible outcomes, and those very outcomes coming true.

I can't talk about the whole book, but I haven't even addressed how the Supreme Court has usurped power in many cases, taking control of things that were never intended to be controlled by the Supreme Court. It is partially responsible for the moral decay of our society. The people who hold this power are not elected by the people, serve no term limits, and it is very difficult to remove them from office. Thus, our country is ultimately being controlled by five people, a majority of nine, who can interpret the Constitution any way they would like in order to fit their personal views and biases. In all truthfulness, they have untethered themselves from the Constitution altogether.

Interestingly enough, not all the cases had an easy "good guy v. bad guy" side. In some cases, both sides had a valid argument, and the ruling by the court may not have necessarily been a "wrong" ruling. The real issue is that through the ruling in each of these seven cases, the Supreme Court claimed more power for itself. That is the real threat. Overall the book was a fascinating read, and I would encourage anybody interested in the subject to pick it up.