John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.

~ President Andrew Jackson (circa 1832)

The appeals court in California has done it again, or as Rush Limbaugh calls this entity, “The Ninth Circus Court of Appeals.” An entry posted on Wall Street Journal blog, “Ruling on California Prison Overcrowding: Cut 57,000 Prisoners,” narrates an outrageous judicial opinion. These lunatics in black robes want to release over 57,000 murders, gang-bangers, drug addicts, drug dealers, rapists, child molesters and other assorted dregs upon Californians over a three-year period.

Why do these august jurists want to release such irredeemable people upon society? Allegedly due to prison overcrowding and the fact that “some inmates die regularly of suicides or lack of proper care.” Well, boo-freakin’-hoo! That’s why they call it prison. It’s supposed to be a bad place so that other potential criminals will think twice before they do something stupid to get sent to prison in the first place.

This news story reminded me of several cases I read in law school and others that I am teaching now to my classes on Constitutional Law and Administrative Law. Namely: Cherokee Nations v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832) where Chief Justice John Marshall upheld the Cherokee Indians’ rights to lands within Georgia and held in part:

The Indians were “domestic dependant nations” under the sovereignty and dominion of the United States, and that they had unquestionable right to the lands they occupied until title should be extinguished by voluntary cession to the United States.

The following year, Justice Marshall extended his opinion:

In this case [Worcester v. Georgia] Chief Justice John Marshall went further and opined that the Cherokee nation was a distinct political community having territorial boundaries within which the State of Georgia had no right to enter except with the permission of the Cherokees. Georgia refused to recognize the court in this matter by not even appearing at the bar of the court and refusing to release Worcester.

Where is President Andrew Jackson when we really need him? Jackson, a man admittedly of a combative and controversial nature, stood for principles that he was willing to die for even jeopardizing his career by not obeying every decree from the Supreme Court.

Jackson’s words above were in essence throwing down the gauntlet to the Supreme Court. As president, he was plainly stating that (in part due to the separation of powers) the court had no real power nor any constitutional position to force President Jackson to stop the state of Georgia from acquiring Indian lands and that if Marshall wanted to do this he would have to do it himself, of course fully realizing that the court had no such power.

In the early 1830s, President Jackson was following the Jeffersonian tradition of Anti-federalism. He believed in strong states rights, for he feared that if the federal government got too strong, the precious “unalienable rights” of the people would be trampled under the boot of the omnipotent state, or by an oligarchy of judges legislating from the bench. Like James Madison, “the father of the Constitution,” Jackson believed, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

Fast forward to 2009: We have a panel of three judges who through the doctrine of judicial review have given themselves the omnipotent power to determine what the prison population of the state of California should be, holding that “evidence offered at trial was overwhelmingly to the effect that overcrowding is the primary cause of the unconstitutional conditions that have been found to exist in the California prisons.”

The psychopathology of these judges gets worse:

The proposed targets would require the state to reduce the prison population by between 36,200 and 57,000 inmates. Attorneys representing inmates had sought a reduction of about 52,000 inmates. The state can change parole and other policies to cut the population of its 33 adult prisons without endangering the public, the judges said. Reducing the number of inmates might have a positive effect as well, they said. “This is particularly true considering that California’s overcrowded prison system is itself … a public safety hazard,” the panel said in its order.

If you think that the overcrowded California prison system is a “public safety hazard,” just think of the untold mayhem, rape, murder, abuse and societal terrorism the residents of California and throughout America will suffer once these irredeemable criminals are unleashed upon society. Also, what about the young criminals in training? The legions of young girls and boys who haven’t risen to the prison level yet? What will these borderline criminals or criminals-in- training think of the rule of law, the meaning of justice and the aphorism “crime doesn’t pay” when all their “homies” and “sistergirls” are being let out of prison for free?

Where is President Andrew Jackson when you really need him?

Here are some suggestions to stem the tide of crazy judicial opinions coming out of our judicial system from the Supreme Court on down. Let’s start with the proverb: “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” We the People, through our elected representatives, have got to put the fear of God back into these judges. They work for us; we don’t work for them. The minute one of these crazy, immoral, unconstitutional opinions is published, we must demand that our politicians immediately file articles of impeachment and hold these radical judges as traitors. This is part of the system of checks and balances so vital to health of our republic.

Second, all of these bankrupt states, like New York, Michigan, Arizona, New Mexico and California with their bloated welfare state budgets, also have large illegal-alien populations, costing their states tens of billions of dollars per year in education, incarceration, medical, social security, welfare and ancillary costs that these governors and their legislatures are too ignorant or afraid to directly address in their budgets for fear of being called a racist. Impeach all of these bums.

Finally, if you really want to stop psychopathic judicial opinions like the California case cited above, which will unleash 57,000 prisoners back into society while doing nothing to address the unconstitutionality of the welfare state and the mayhem caused by illegal immigration annually costing Americans $346 billion, prison officials should make sure some of these irredeemable criminals are put in halfway houses in the same neighborhood of these judges, defense attorneys and liberal politicians who aided in releasing those prisoners.

Only then will this perversion of the Constitution and the rule of law will come to an end, because all rational people will clearly see these foolish judicial opinions have moved from “theory” into actual policy practice – a policy that will adversely and directly affect these judicial psychopaths in black robes in a way they never intended.

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Ellis Washington, currently a professor of law and political science at Savannah State University, former editor at the Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute, is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history, political philosophy and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including “The Inseparability of Law and Morality: The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law” (2002). See his law review article “Reply to Judge Richard Posner.” Washington’s latest book is “The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust.”

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