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A CALL TO STAND WITH CHIEF JUSTICE
ROY MOORE
by John Eidsmoe
The storms of moral crisis
has descended upon the State of Alabama. Among the most vital issues facing American
jurisprudence are (1) whether our legal system may acknowledge the
Higher Law of God as the source and measure of our laws; (2) whether the
establishment clause of the First Amendment prohibits the State of
Alabama from acknowledging God and His law as the moral foundation of
law; (3) whether the State of Alabama (and the 49 other states) are
distinctive and viable entities in the American constitutional system or
whether they are merely closely supervised subdivisions of a national
government; and (4) whether it is ever appropriate to disobey the order
of a federal judge.
All of these issues come together in the
Alabama Ten Commandments case, often cited as Glassroth v. Moore.
The symbolic portrayal could not be more
graphic. In the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery,
stands a 5,280 lb granite monument depicting the Ten Commandments, with
various quotations from America's founding fathers on the monument's
four sides. Just a few blocks away, in front of the Federal Court House,
stands a sculpture of Themis, the Greek goddess of law and justice. The
10 Commandments monument was financed entirely with private donations;
Themis was paid for by federal funds. And yet, the Themis is guarded by
federal officers, while U.S. District Court Myron Thompson has ruled
that the Ten Commandments monument must be removed from the Judicial
Building rotunda.
Recently I have noticed a
shift in the debate. A few weeks ago the debate centered between those
who say Judge Thompson is right and those who say Judge Thompson is
wrong. Today, the debate seems to be between those who say Judge
Thompson is wrong but his order must be obeyed, and those who say that Judge
Thompson is wrong and we must resist his order. I have written at great
length to articulate my belief that the 10 Commandments may properly be
displayed in court houses and other public buildings; the most complete
exposition of my position may be found in my article " The Alabama Ten
Commandments Case: Is the Pendulum of Establishment Clause Jurisprudence
Swinging Back to Nonpreferentialism?" Jones Law Review II:1 December
1998 pp. 39-97. I am writing to you to declare
my belief that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is justified in
disobeying Federal Judge Myron Thompson's order to remove the Ten
Commandments monument, and that public officials, pastors, and other
citizens of Alabama and across the nation should come to Chief Justice
Moore's defense. I do not treat disobedience
lightly. As a former prosecutor, a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel and
Judge Advocate, and a Colonel and Chaplain in the Alabama State Defense
Force, I strongly believe in the rule of law. The rule of law means we
submit to lawful authority. But just as strongly, the rule of law means
we resist unlawful authority. For the rule of law restrains both the
people and their rulers. Where law does not restrain the people, the
result is anarchy. Where law does not restrain the rulers, there is
tyranny. Those who believe in the rule of law must be equally opposed to
both.
It is often said that a
public official, especially a State Supreme Court Chief Justice, has a
higher duty than others to obey the orders of a federal court, that
civil disobedience may be an option for a private citizen but not for
Chief Justice Moore. The exact opposite is true. State officials have a
heightened duty to resist unlawful federal authority, and when they do
so it is called interposition. Black's Law Dictionary,
Fourth Edition offers the following definition: " Interposition. The doctrine
that a state, in the exercise of its sovereignty, may reject a mandate
of the federal government deemed to be unconstitutional or to exceed the
powers delegated to the federal government. The concept is based on the
10th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States reserving to the
states powers not delegated to the United States. Historically, the
doctrine emanated from Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dallas 419, wherein the
state of Georgia, when sued in the Supreme Court by a private citizen of
another state, entered a remonstrance and declined to recognize the
court's jurisdiction. Amendment 11 validated Georgia's position. Implementation of the
doctrine may be peaceable, as by resolution, remonstrance or
legislation, or may proceed ultimately to nullification with forcible
resistance.
The Constitution does
contemplate and provide for the contingency of adverse state
interposition or legislation to annul or defeat the execution of
national laws." In Re Charge to Grand Jury, Fed. Case No. 18,274 [2 Spr.
292]. Far from a
radical doctrine, interposition is actually a middle ground position.
Absolute submission to unlawful authority leads to and sanctions tyranny
and oppression. Popular rebellion can lead to chaos and bloodshed.
Interposition -- lesser magistrates, state and local authorities,
placing themselves between their people and the higher magistrates or
federal authorities -- is a moderate course that is less likely to
result in either extreme. Interposition has a long tradition in Western law and has led to some of
the greatest advances in constitutional liberty. Medieval theologians
and philosophers who addressed and endorsed interposition include John
of Salisbury (1030-85 AD), James of Viterbo (circa 1300 AD), and Thomas
Aquinas (1225-1274 AD). Aquinas believed that "...the
duty of obedience is, for the Christian, a consequence of this
derivation of authority from God, and ceases when that ceases. But, as
we have already said, authority may fail to derive from God for two
reasons: either because of the way in which authority has been obtained,
or in consequence of the use which is made of it." (Book 2, Commentary
on the Sentences of Peter Lombard) When a
ruler becomes a tyrant, his authority no longer comes from God and he
becomes an illegitimate ruler. While it may be better to bear with
moderate degrees of tyranny, Christians must stand against the ruler
when his tyranny becomes excessive. But popular rebellion may have
disastrous consequences: the ruler may suppress the rebellion and become
more tyrannical than before, or those who overthrow him, fearing that
others may do the same, become just as tyrannical as their predecessors.
So what is the solution? Aquinas says, "...it
seems that to proceed against the cruelty of tyrants is an action to be
undertaken, not through the private presumption of a few, but rather by
public authority." (Book 1, On Kingship ) While
continental theologians wrote about interposition, English theologians
and nobles put interposition into practice. Since 890 AD England had
been governed under the legal code of Alfred the Great, which began with
a recitation of the Ten Commandments. But after the Norman Conquest of
1066 AD, Anglo-Saxons and Celts felt themselves oppressed under the more
centralized Norman rule. Finally in the 1200s, chafing under the
autocratic measures of King John, English leaders decided it was time to
act. On August
25, 1213, a group of barons and bishops met at St. Paul's Cathedral in
London. Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury (also known for
having divided the Bible into chapters), read to them the old Charter of
King Henry, expounded to them the doctrine of interposition, and
administered to them an oath that they would conquer or die in defense
of their liberties and those of their subjects. Two years
later, the barons and bishops commissioned Robert Fitz Walter as
Marshall of the Army of God and Holy Church. On June 15, 1215, they met
King John at Runneymeade and compelled him to either sign the Magna
Charta or abdicate the throne. John signed, and the 63 articles of the
Magna Charta constitute a founding document of English liberty. Its main
significance, however, is not the rights it contains, which are simply
the reassertion of the ancient rights of Englishmen against the
encroachments of a Norman king, but rather the fact that the king was
forced to sign against his will on threat of being overthrown. This was a
constitutional crisis of the first order. It was handled by
interposition - and we have been blessed with the results for nearly
eight hundred years. A century
later, the Scots practiced interposition against English rule under King
Alexander, Malcolm Wallace, William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and
others. In April 1320, Robert the Bruce gathered the Parliament of
Scotland at Arbroath Abbey, where they drafted and adopted the
Declaration of Arbroath, in which they set forth their history as a free
people until the usurpation of King Edward of England, and vowed that "...for,
as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we under any
conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory,
nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for
that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself." (Scottish
history and thought have greatly influenced America, especially Alabama
where our state flag bears the St. Andrew's Cross. When the Scots again
fought for independence in the 1740s under Bonnie Prince Charles and
were brutally suppressed, thousands of them fled to America. A
generation later, Scottish-Americans became leaders in the American War
for Independence. The Mecklenburg Declaration, drafted in 1775 by a
group of Scottish Presbyterian elders in North Carolina, bears striking
parallels to the Declaration of Independence.) Reformation leaders followed and further developed the Catholic teaching
on interposition. John Calvin declared that private individuals normally
should not undertake the curbing of tyrants but should follow "popular
magistrates" in doing so: "For when
popular magistrates have been appointed to curb the tyranny of kings (as
the Ephori, who were opposed to kings among the Spartans, or Tribunes of
the people to consuls among the Romans, or Demarchs to the senate among
the Athenians; and perhaps there is something similar to this in the
power exercised in each kingdom by the three orders, when they hold
their primary diets), so far am I from forbidding these officially to
check the undue license of kings, that if they connive at kings when
they tyrannize and insult over the humbler of the people, I affirm that
their dissimulation is not free from nefarious perfidy; because they
fraudulently betray the liberty of the people, while knowing that, by
the ordinance of God, they are its appointed guardians." (Institutes of
the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 20, 1559 AD) Other
Reformation leaders who articulated the doctrine of interposition were
John Knox, father of the Presbyterian Church (1505-72 AD), the French
Huguenot author of Vindicae Contra Tyrannos (1579 AD) who used the
surname Junius Brutus, and Scottish theologian Samuel Rutherford in Lex
Rex (1644 AD). Among Catholic and Protestant theologians alike, I am
just barely skimming the surface because of time and space constraints. In the
1600s, while the English colonies of North America were being planted
and populated, England herself was locked in a struggle between the
Puritans in Parliament and the Stuart kings. The common perception that
the Stuarts believed in the "divine right of kings" is simplistic. Both
sides believed governmental authority comes from God; the issue was
lines of governmental authority. The Stuart kings believed God gives
authority directly to the king. The Parliamentarians contended that God
gives governmental authority to the people, who delegate that authority
to lesser magistrates (local earls, sheriffs, barons, members of
Parliament), and they in turn delegate authority to the king. That being
so, they insisted, the king is answerable to the parliament, and the
parliament in turn is answerable to the people. Through
decades of struggle, the Parliament practiced various forms of
interposition: negotiation, legislation, litigation agitation. Twice
they took interposition further, trying and convicting King Charles I of
treason and executing him in 1649, and deposing James II in the
bloodless Glorious Revolution of 1688 and forcing him to flee to France.
The following year the English Parliament reaffirmed the ancient
God-given rights of Englishmen in the English Bill of Rights of 1689. And as the
struggle for liberty waged in England, the American colonists looked on
with approval. Nathaniel Hawthorne captured their spirit in his short
story, The Gray Champion. Less than
a century later it was America's turn. Believing the English king and
parliament were usurping their rights and the autonomy their colonial
charters had guaranteed to them, the colonists came together in the
first Continental Congress of 1774. On October 14 they issued their
Declaration and Resolves that "...The
good people of the several colonies...justly alarmed at these arbitrary
proceedings of parliament and administration, have severally elected,
constituted, and appointed deputies to meet, and sit in general
Congress...in order to obtain such establishment, as that their
religion, laws, and liberties, may not be subverted." After two
years of futile attempts to practice moderate forms of interposition and
resolve their differences with England, in 1776 the Continental Congress
adopted the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps the best-known document
of interposition in history, the Declaration proclaims that the American
colonies are entitled to independence by "the Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God." It sets forth the basic "unalienable rights" endowed "by
their Creator," proclaims that "to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed." The Declaration then claims: That
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is
the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness. The
Declaration cautions that established governments should not be changed
for light and transient reasons: But when a
long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same
Object evinces a design to reduce them to absolute Despotism, it is
their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to
provide new Guards for their future security.
The
Declaration then sets forth a list of grievances that, taken together,
establish that George III has exercised tyranny over the colonies and
concludes that "A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act
which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."
to read the rest of this article
Judge Roy Moore Ten Commandments
Romans 13:8-10
8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
10 Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
The law is fulfilled by love.
Galatians 5:14
For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself.
This Week In History
June 3, 1647:
The Puritan British Parliament bans Christmas and other holidays.
No man has ever fulfilled (kept) the Law!!
Romans 3:19-28
“Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law:
that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight:
for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law
is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God
which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation
through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past,
through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just,
and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded.
By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified
by faith without the deeds of the law.”
for more information about the battle of Judge Roy Moore and the Ten Commandments go to, click
Ten Commandments Law
10 Commandments
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