Our Threatened Freedom

Are the Courts an Enemy to Justice

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 144-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 144

Dictation Name: Vol. L - Part 01 - Are the Courts an Enemy to Justice

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Are the courts an enemy to justice? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

For more and more people, the courts are a major roadblock to justice. The criminal seems to do better in the courts than the victim, and the whole judicial process is a costly drain on the taxpayer. The Supreme Court seems to be a place where folly, not justice, reigns supreme. We can understand why this is so if we take a look at a key figure in 20th century American law. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. whose dates are 1841 to 1935, was an associate justice with the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in 1882, and Chief Justice of that court 1899 to 1902. From there he went in 1902 to the US Supreme Court, serving until 1932, for 30 very influential years. The relativism and cynicism of Holmes can be summed up by his famous statement, and I quote, “I am not here to do justice, I am here to play the game according to the rules.” Unquote. For Holmes, justice as something absolute and true did not exist. The law for him simply reflected the will of the majority of the people.

A few years ago this Holmsian attitude was summed up by a prominent criminal lawyer in these words. “What the hell is justice?” And this is our profit. A belief in justice is dropping out of our courts, our law schools, and our legislators. The law is no longer the instrument of justice, but the will of the people, and if 51% of the voters are evil, then of necessity the law is evil.

Of course the answer to this, made by many, is that there is no such thing as good and evil. An American philosopher, who died recently, Walter Kaufmann, called for a social order beyond guilt and justice. For him, the idea of guilt and justice was simply a hangover from the belief in God and should have been abandoned.

If the law is only a game, as Holmes said, it is a very expensive game played with human lives, your lives and mine. For those of us who pay the price as the victims of injustice, it is infuriating to hear justice reduced to a game. With court officials and lawyers playing with our lives and our possessions, the law and the courts as a game are destructive of both freedom and justice.

This has been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.