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U.S. Constitution Title: The Logic of Constitutional Republican Government The Logic of Constitutional Republican Government Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) Address:www.constitution.org/ussc/005- http://137jr.htm">www.constitution.org/ussc/005-137jr.htm ^ | 11/6/03 | Jon Roland Posted on 11/6/2003, 3:01:38 PM by tpaine The Logic of Constitutional Republican Government The logic of constitutional republican government is that everyone, not just the courts, and not just public officials, has the duty to enforce the law, and, where conflicts in the law arise, resolve those conflicts and apply the correct law. When one of the laws in conflict is the constitution, then the duty is of constitutional review, which is only judicial review when it is judges that happen to do it. It is not an exclusive power of the courts. It is a duty of everyone subject to the Constitution. So what happens if the Supreme Court rules in a case that a statute is unconstitutional, but the Congress or the President disagrees with them? They are bound to respect the decision in that case, unless they have strong enough conviction of the wrongness of the decision to refuse to abide by it, but the ruling does not remove the statute from the books. It could still be enforced by the Executive in other cases. But the Court is indicating by its decision that it will not enforce the statute in other cases, and that any attempt to do so by the other branches will not be productive. Confronted with that refusal by the Judiciary to enforce, it is to be expected that the Executive will stop trying to enforce it, and the Congress will stop trying to fund it. It takes all three branches to cooperate in establishing and enforcing a law, and the refusal of any one of them defeats the effort. The same principle extends to civilians. If jurors refuse to convict under a criminal statute that at least one of them considers to be unconstitutional, then the enforcement of the act fails, and it becomes a dead letter. If the required majority of the jury in a civil case fail to support the plaintiff in an action authorized by law, then that law becomes moot. This also points to the conclusion that under a constitutional requirement for unanimous verdicts of twelve jurors in criminal trials, if the objective is to have a 50 percent chance of a prosecution succeeding in obtaining a guilty verdict, and the jury is selected at random from the population, then there needs to be at least 94 percent support for the criminal statute in the community. If there is not, then mathematically there is a better than 50 percent chance that in a random jury of twelve at least one of them will disagree with the law enough to refuse to convict someone of violating it. The choice of a jury size of twelve is not an accident of history. As it happens, human societies have historically had an average of about six percent of their populations who were disposed to delinquency if not disciplined by the other 94 percent, who tend by nature to not engage in delinquent behavior even without the sanction of law. However, whenever a majority of less than 94 percent has attempted to impose its morality on the remainder by criminal laws, the result has, in general, been counterproductive and even destructive of social cohesion and respect for law and lawmaking. This indicates that a constitution should require that any criminal laws be passed by a legislative majority of at least 94 percent. Excerpted from Jon Rolands comments on Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread |
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