Judge Tests Trump's Defense of God-endowed Right

Dr. Alan Keyes

by Dr. Alan Keyes: U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan recently "ordered the government to allow an illegal immigrant minor in its custody to abort her preborn child 'promptly and without delay.'" But the premise of the U.S. Constitution, set forth in the Declaration of Independence, is that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including first of all the right to life. Furthermore, the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits any construction of the Constitution's enumeration of rights that denies or disparages rights retained by the people. Judge Chutkan's order therefore appears to be blatantly anti-constitutional.

Since the Creator-endowed rights of all humanity are unalienable and antecedent to any and all rights derived from merely human authority, they are obviously protected by the Ninth Amendment. Therefore, no merely human authority (including parental authority) can be construed to possess the right to deny or disparage the right to life of any innocent human being. This is why the U.S. Constitution forbids depriving any person of life without "due process of law," which latter excludes deliberately targeting innocent human persons for death.

It has recently been reported that the Trump administration is drafting "a new strategic plan that states in its introduction that 'life begins at conception.'" If this report be true, and the administration is serious about the reported change from Obama's support for so-called "abortion rights," then Judge Chutkan's blatantly anti-constitutional order, and any similar order by the Federal Judiciary at any level, must be rejected. If President Trump lends the Executive power to any such blatant violation of the constitutional liberty he is sworn to uphold, he will be derelict in his sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.

The decisions of the Federal Judiciary, including those of the Supreme Court of the United States, do not represent the ultimate authority controlling the construction of the United States Constitution. When judicial judgments plainly contradict the explicit language of the Constitution, as all judgments that uphold the murder of innocent human offspring obviously do, the other branches of the U.S. government are bound by oath to uphold the Constitution, not the judicial order to abrogate its provisions.

As Alexander Hamilton argued in his presentation of the argument for judicial review of congressional legislation (Federalist No. 78):...[T]he Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.

Not does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both; and that where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former.But the imperative that ought to govern the Judiciary on account of its duty to uphold the Constitution must also govern the other branches, sworn to the same duty. In all matters that do not directly involve the plain language of the Constitution, it may be prudent for the other branches to defer to the Supreme Court of the United States. But to do so in matters of fundamental principle, vital to the God-endowed authority of the people (which ordains and establishes that of the Constitution) profoundly endangers the perpetuation of their self-government. For the people to retain their liberty, in the true sense, such deference to judicial abuse has led, and will always eventually lead, to conflicts in which people subject to profound injustices, perpetrated under color of law, appeal to the ultimate law-giving authority, which is the authority of the Creator, God.

But given the common sense of the American people, their representatives in the different branches of government ought to uphold the terms of the Constitution they are obliged by reason, and the republican premises of our self-government, to uphold. If and when they do so, the Constitution's provisions for periodic elections assure reliable opportunities to appeal persuasively to the common sense and goodwill of the people, before people roused by their resentment of insufferable injustices are obliged to appeal to God.

This means that the president of the United States should reject judicial decisions that plainly violate the Constitution. He should appeal lower court decisions to the Supreme Court of the United States. If the SCOTUS upholds the abuse, he should reject such a decision and appeal to the representatives of the people in Congress, and to the people themselves. In any case, he should persuasively uphold the Constitution's provisions. If a sufficient majority in Congress agrees with the Judiciary, the president may be impeached and removed for his defiance of the Judiciary's unconstitutional opinion. If such a majority does not exist, the minority supporting the errant Judiciary may appeal to the people in ensuing elections, seeking support for the Court's judgment. In any case, the Federal Judiciary must be consistently subject to challenge whenever it tries to substitute its will for that of the people, most permanently expressed in the words of the Constitution.

Just as the courts exist to allow individuals to appeal against unjust abuses of the Legislative or Executive powers, so the other branches, and the constitutional institution of periodic elections, exist to allow the people to appeal against unjust abuses of God-endowed right and justice by the courts. In the end, this means that the people themselves hold the power of arbitration on which the longevity of their self-government depends.

Many of President Trump's supporters believe that he is the man to restore the constitutional sovereignty of the American people in this respect. What he does in response to Judge Chutkan's anti-constitutional attempt to enforce the murder of an innocent child in the womb will show whether, in this respect, their confidence in his administration is justified.
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Alan Keyes served as Asst Secretary of State for International Organizations and as Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council under President Ronald Reagan. He ran for president in 1996, 2000 and 2008, and was a Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate for Maryland in 1988 and 1992, and for Illinois in 2004 against Democrat Barack Obama. He also writes for Renew America where he first shared this article and blogs at LoyaltoLiberty.com.

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