Independent Courts:

The Scriptures', The Common Law's and the Constitution's Demand.

On 15 February 2007, Justice Stephens stated that since the beginning of his thirty years on the bench, he has never seen morale among federal judges as low as it now is. He attributes the low morale to low pay - annual salary for a federal district judge is $165,000 and for a Supreme Court justice $212,000.

He further states that low pay threatens the independence of the federal courts. When Congress set the foregoing salaries for federal judges, they were plenty high; though they appear to remain unchanged, these salaries have been diminished in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution, however, requires that federal "judges both of the supreme and inferior Courts . . . shall . . . receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished . . . ."

Nonetheless, in violation of this clear mandate, the manipulators of the dollar's value by the issuance of paper money - the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank - diminish the value of judicial salaries through inflation. The bankers would have us believe that the devaluation of money through inflation is not humanly controllable, but it is as long as the value of the dollar is fixed to an unchanging standard, such as gold.

Congress has abrogated its non-delegable duty under the Constitution to regulate the value of money to a private bank board: the chief share holders of the Federal Reserve Bank. Further, the Courts have failed to call Congress to account for this breach of constitutional duty.

The Constitution gives to Congress the power to establish just weights and measures and the related power to regulate the value of money. Just weights and measures, as understood in Scripture, concern the right relationship between two objects balanced on a set of scales: one of fixed weight (the standard) and the weight of the other to be adjusted to the fixed weight to achieve the balance. Thus, as a Hebrew legal term of art, "just" (Hebrew, tsedeq) weights and measures signifies an unchanging standard to which all else must adjust. He who would change such a standard, said Jeremiah, is an oppressor. (Jeremiah 22:3).

The few, through unlawful tampering with monetary standards, have made unjust gain at the expense of the many, diminishing the salaries of federal judges and, as Justice Stephens suggests, threatens the independence of our Courts. The Constitution categorically forbids any man or combination of men from diminishing the salaries of federal judges. Indeed, if any in government or in the private sector, directly or indirectly, gains the power to diminish the salary of federal judges and does so, then that person or persons has violated the express prohibition of the Constitution, the common-law and Scripture's separation of powers, and the principle of Scripture concerning just weights and measures.

In a common-law country such as the United States, the foundation of the common-law tradition of government and the most important element of common-law separation of powers is the independence of the courts from the other powers of government and from the private sector seeking to control government from without. Assuming, as Magna Carta requires, that judges have been appointed that both know the law and mean to observe it well, judges, as well as individual jurors, must remain free to follow the law. The power to diminish judicial salaries is the power to control judges.


copyright © 2008 by Brent Winters