The United States Supreme Court is a rolling constitutional convention. The make up of the Supreme Court determines what laws and activities are constitutional. What is written in the constitution is not what determines what is constitutional and what is not. The Supreme Court justices make that decision and their reasoning is not necessarily based on the constitution itself. A Supreme Court appointment is a political appointment and the appointee is a politician. Although Supreme Court justices are assumed to be the best legal minds in the country they are not. Supreme Court justices are the best politicians among legal scholars. Many judges and attorneys are far ahead in scholarship than are the nine justices on the Supreme Court. Each justice is a political activist even though each would profess otherwise. From the beginning what is constitutional and what is not has fluctuated wildly.

Any time a president appoints a justice to the Supreme Court, to the president, the candidate is a means to an end. The appointment could possibly represent a president’s vision for the country. But, the appointment may be the result of political promises. It is important that citizens understand the true nature of Supreme Court appointments.

The founding fathers left us with no formal method of determining the constitutionality of laws. So, the path of least resistance was to let the Supreme Court fill that role. The constitution may have never been ratified if the founding fathers had included a method of enforcement. Americans have reverence for the founding fathers and their thoughts. The founding fathers were motivated by self interest. Government has always been the place for the wealthy to go to to get what they want. The founding fathers were probably not willing to deny themselves that opportunity.

Suppose the citizens of the United States suddenly opted for consistency in interpreting the constitution. In such a case one method would be to have citizens sit on a constitutional jury to decide the constitutionality of laws before the laws become active.  It would be a large jury and each state would have jurors in proportion to its congressional representation numbers. Of all our democracy based institution, the jury system as it is used in courts is the only institution that works as intended.

It is said that the constitution must be interpreted by legal scholars. However, it was not written by legal scholars. The concept of legal scholar had not even completely evolved when the constitution was written. A panel of ordinary citizens would do a much less biased job of interpreting the constitution than our Supreme Court. An institution like the Supreme Court is filled by justices, all who have political personalities. A jury of citizens would be an equal distribution of personality types. The result would be unbiased decisions and fewer laws on the books.

The truth is a hard sell. Fantasy Free Economics gains readers one at a time. Major search engines simply do not list blogs which disagree with their political agenda. As long as folks share the link to this blog and others speaking out against the grain, the truth will at least trickle into the public consciousness.

Fantasy Free Economics recommends the following blogs.

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