Bainbridge Mentions the "S" Word

Perhaps the principle most abhorred by the Left is the Principle of Subsidiarity--roughly, that the lowest-possible level of government should solve a problem. IOW, parking tickets and barfights are really municipal problems, not Federal cases.

But the Left disagrees; in their quest to legislate without voting, they have enlisted SCOTUS (and all the Federal courts) in smashing the principle of subsidiarity, practically to the point where the concept is unrecognized, despite the clear intention of the 9th and 10th Amendments.

There's a fellow named Roy Moore who knows all about this, and he's been slammed to the floor by "principled conservatives" for his willingness to self-sacrifice on the issue.

Well, Bainbridge brings it up, mentioning the Warren Court as the major malefactor:

Of course, those same activists presided over a vast expansion of the rights of criminal defendants at the expense of the victims of crime, a huge shift in power from states to the federal government and the concomitant evisceration of the principle of subsidiarity as a bedrock of American federalism, and the shackling of the economy under government regulation. Worse yet, those activist judges substituted unchecked judicial power for democracy.

As Justice Harlan complained of the SCOTUS' reapportionment cases, “these decisions give support to a current mistaken view of the Constitution and the constitutional function of this Court. This view, in a nutshell, is that every major social ill in this country can find its cure in some constitutional ‘principle,’ and that this Court should ‘take the lead’ in promoting reform when other branches of government fail to act” (Reynolds v. Sims 1964, 624).

Thanks, Professor, for reminding us of the legal "first things."