Wednesday, December 09, 2015

The (Tattered) Faith of SCOTUS

Interesting look at things here.  Especially interesting given that the Court recognized secular humanism as "a religion."

The secular humanism Posner and Segall (and Linda Greenhouse et al.) would impose depends upon a certain priesthood. In contrast to Scalia’s hierarchical Catholicism, the Posner-Segall clerisy consists of majoritarian conciliarism: any five Supreme Court justices can define what must be believed de fide definita in this faith. Once promulgated as an article of faith, it now brooks no heresy. It is infallible and to be applied always and everywhere. Not just subordinate courts but even subsequent Supreme Courts are believed to be bound to apply that majoritarian decision in all future cases, under the rubric of “respect for precedent.” 

But, you object, what if the article of faith is in error? Indeed, this majoritarian theocracy makes claims for a far greater infallibility than ever did any Roman Pontiff, because under the doctrine of judicial supremacy, the majority practically cannot be in error. Once declared to be precedent, adherence to that article of faith is deemed an essential sine qua non to the Court’s legitimacy[3] and even the “rule of law.”[4] So profound is the transformative effect of decree by the Court’s majoritarian theocracy that the ensuing decisions become practically infallible: only when manifestly unworkable and in error might such decisions be self-overruled (think Plessy v. Ferguson, because it took Congress to fix the travesty of Dred Scott). Indeed, even a conservative jurist like Robert Bork was so committed to the faith of majority decisions that he conceded some wrong decisions might be made right (a secular sanatio in radice?) by their simple persistence....

The Religion of Secular Humanism's reign of the last ~50 years is about to end.  The revolutionary noises heard from the Trumpkins, Cruzians, and Paulites, (to one degree or another)--fueled by the flammability of the Mohammedan question and the Fools' Errand of attempting to dis-arm the population--will see to that.

The only question:  will it end well?

A friend of mine started a magazine called "Culture Wars" several years ago.  While his recent offerings have been rather strange, he has the idea right; it's the old Kulturkampf, but writ much larger these days, here in the US.

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