The Supreme Court is held in high regard, perhaps because people perceive that it lies above the political conflict in and between Congress and the executive branch. Some would argue that it is the final authority on constitutional interpretation. However, this institution has amassed for itself extreme, disproportionate power that doesn’t belong in a republic such as ours. Indeed, there is nothing standing between us and a judicial tyranny in which justices can obliterate our rights whenever they deem it necessary or appropriate.

Below are only a couple of examples demonstrating some of the most egregious decisions in Court history. For now, I shall forgo including some obviously terrible decisions, like Dredd Scott v. Sandford, because we are already aware of them and their impact on our core values. Instead, this essay will focus on lesser-known holdings produced by this threat to liberty known as the judiciary.

Korematsu v. United States

The most heinous violations of rights in human history are often accompanied by the use of concentration camps, as exemplified by Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and North Korea, to name a few. Even the United States is not immune; during the Second World War, Roosevelt’s administration, ostensibly to protect West Coast targets from treasonous Japanese-Americans, ordered the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of the aforementioned.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court, with little regard for the Constitution, basic human rights, dignity, and liberty, upheld this extreme policy despite little evidence to support its use.

Interestingly, some progressives on these forums have called me a “fascist”, or some variation of that term, but my opposition to the racist internment camps ought to disprove their claims. These very same people idolize Franklin Roosevelt, but why don’t they criticize his use of concentration camps?

See also: Yasui v. United States, Hirabayashi v. United States

Marbury v. Madison

You’d be correct to assume that granting an agency or institution the ability to determine the legality of its own policies might be unwise. That’s why a division of powers between different organs in whose interests it is to safeguard their own authority.

However, in Marbury, the Court does just that. They give themselves absolute control over application of the Constitution, regardless of how preposterous their legal reasoning in a given case might be. Justice John Marshall did what you can anticipate from any government official: he expanded his power by misinterpreting the law, leaving the Supreme Court as the last, highest body that determines constitutionality.

Thomas Jefferson rightly believed that granting the judiciary vast jurisdiction in matters of constitutional interpretation will lead to tyranny. History exonerates him from any charges of falsehood. Our highest judicial body has, over time, trampled on the rights of blacks, business owners, foreigners during war, and unborn children, in some cases justifying acts of mass murder and imprisonment to support its invented rights. This runs contrary to Article III of the Constitution and the basic principles of federal government as enumerated in our foundational document.

To argue that the Supreme Court is the last arbiter of constitutionality is to elevate people above law, a notion that contradicts our most fundamental principles.