Our Threatened Freedom

Justice in the Courts

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 5-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 005

Dictation Name: Vol. A – Part 05 – Justice in the Courts

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Justice in the courts, this is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

In March of 1980, the sheriff and his men arrested the pastor of a church in Mississippi. Reverend Herman Fountain is pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church and Children’s Home near {?}. The Children’s home seeks to rehabilitate children, or to provide a home for homeless children. No child is kept against his wishes, and the honor system prevails. A 15 year old boy, 6 feet tall, about 180 pounds in weight, had just been placed in the home. Pastor Fountain had told the unruly boy either to keep the rules, or leave. The boy took off, was picked up on the highway by the sheriff’s men at 3 to 4 a.m. and he claimed he had been whipped.

Without an investigation, the sheriff, some of his men, and a welfare department employee went to the church at 11 a.m. on Sunday morning, to arrest the pastor. The assistant pastor was also arrested, the service shut down, and church records confiscated. All the children in the home were taken and examined to see if they had any bruises. No criminal action was proved or prosecuted, the state required minor changes in the home facilities, most of them already planned or in progress, and asked Pastor and Mrs. Fountain and three other defendants to sign a release form stating that they would take no civil legal action, charging violation of their civil and or constitutional rights, before they would agree to drop the charges.

What was unusual in this case was the fact that the court apologized, more than once according to reports, to Pastor Fountain and the others. Godly and innocent men are regularly subjected to legal injustice and harassment, without any apologies.

The Mississippi Court was unusual in the fact that some apology was made, and deserves commendation for this fact.

What was usual in this case, however, was what the release form represented. Our courts are agencies of county, state or federal branches of government. They have come to represent and defend, not the freedom of the people, nor their interests, but of the state and its bureaucracy. As a result, the courts represent less and less a resort for the people and their appeal or justice, but more and more a statist resource against the people. A very high percentage of the cases heard by the higher courts represent appeals by some branch or agency of state against the people. We can be grateful in this situation that there are more than a few judges who vindicate the appealed, but the trend is towards the vindication of the state.

Marxism holds, openly, to the belief that the law and the courts must represent a class interest. Their charge against us is that our courts represent the capitalistic class against the workers. The theory behind our judicial system is that the court and law must represent justice, not a class, nor the state; the state cannot be identified with justice. All too often in history, past and present, the state has been the source of very monstrous injustices.

For a court thus to protect any state bureaucracy, agency, or officer, and to cooperate in a release form which exempts all such from the rightful penalties for their actions, is thus morally wrong. The court has no right to represent the state or the people, the court must represent justice.