I believe that if the Judicial Power is impregnable —and I am ready to admit that it is so to all appearance— it is due largely to the unwillingness of liberals to fight which is also indicated by the same question. I confess to being old-fashioned enough to believe in old-fashioned democracy.

LOUIS BOUDIN, after the introduction I've posted already, extended his introduction to answer some criticisms he got for his book, I am posting that because the things he addresses are exactly the ones which I'm sure will be brought up to any proposal to effectively correct and reform the Supreme Court in the face of even its few decent members unwillingness to give up what they are used to, what they were taught was right and proper - even as they are some of the most constant witnesses to it being wrong and oppressive - and as idiots who believe what they have seen in movies, in TV shows and read in novels about the idolized and Potemkin false front presenting the Supreme Court as the temple of "Equal justice under law" when it is actually the tool of oligarchs, the wealthy and privileged and the white supremacists who are, as well, tools of the oligarchs and wealthy.  

As he hints at, the system as it is is kept in place in no small measure due to it working for the rich and, so, powerful it works for, what finances and rewards the lying popular culture image of the Founders, the Constitution as it is and the various institutions it set up, the anti-democratic Senate, the Electoral College and, perhaps most of all, the Supreme Court, though as noted repeatedly, the Supreme Court created for itself, unratified by any state legislature, powers that even some of the Founders warned were dangerous even for the amount of democracy and equality they may have favored before the last of them, Madison, I believe, died in the 1830s.
 

IN the preceding introductory note, I have attempted to state the general purpose of this work. But I feel that I owe my readers — and some friends whose advice I did not take — an explanation with regard to the manner in which I went about the performance of my task. Perhaps the best way of doing it is to answer in advance some expected criticism.

The first criticism of this work which will naturally suggest itself relates to its purpose. The purpose of the work has already been stated. But a purpose ought to be practical. And what practical results can one expect from attacking the existence of the Judicial Power — particularly since the book does not suggest any remedy, any way of either abolishing or curbing it? The answer is that I believe there is a remedy or, rather, a choice of remedies but  that I considered the discussion of remedies premature, in view of the fact that most people do not understand the nature of the disease from which our body politic is suffering.

One of the best-known liberal judges of this country, who knew I was working at my task, once asked me, with a shrug of the shoulders ‘What’s the use?” This question and shrug of the shoulders is typical of the attitude of our liberals towards the Judicial Power. It is based on the firm conviction that a frontal attack upon that Power is hopeless. The logical result of this conviction is a program of prayer. We must pray—and occasionally argue—for good men in the seat of power. I am at once more optimistic of the situation as a whole and less so about the efficacy of prayer. I do not think that the prayer for good men is of much use once we dare not attack the foundations of the power which these men wield. On the other hand, I think the case is not quite as hopeless as the noted judge’s question would indicate. I believe that if the Judicial Power is impregnable —and I am ready to admit that it is so to all appearance— it is due largely to the unwillingness of liberals to fight which is also indicated by the same question. I confess to being old-fashioned enough to believe in old-fashioned democracy. What is more, I believe that the people of the United States are not ready to abdicate their right to self-government. And if they have actually done so—and this book proves that they have—it is because they did not know what they were doing, and still do not know what has actually happened to them. The Judicial Power is based not so much on an initial act of usurpation as on continued ignorance as to the actual workings of our governmental system, which leaves the illusion of self-government while destroying its substance. It is my belief that if the true inwardness of this system were to become generally known its days would be numbered, unless, perhaps, the “good men" were put in power by the beneficiaries of the system as a means of saving it.

This makes my purpose practical. It also limits my task. If I succeed in bringing home to the people the true nature of the system I am attacking, they can be relied upon to take care of the question of remedies. My task, as I conceive it, is best expressed by a statement once made by the late Frederick R. Coudert, staid and conservative leader of the bar:

“As Dr. Johnson says: "Let us rid ourselves of cant;" let us not do one thing and say another; let us not act upon the theory that the Constitution is as unchangeable as the law of the Medes and the Persians, when it is being constantly changed by judicial interpretation, in many respects quite as effectually and much more easily than it could be by amendment in the prescribed form.”
(Certainty and Justice, p. 60.) 

When Boudin says:

I do not think that the prayer for good men is of much use once we dare not attack the foundations of the power which these men wield.

that, I presume, atheist made a very potent and righteous religious critique of the act of praying as popularly imagined by religious people.   I have pointed out a number of weeks back that when Christians pray "Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done," they are praying for governance superior in equality and justice to any human created scheme of government, even the best one available at the time of its creation because rule according to the Will of God is bound to be superior in every way.  THAT IS CERTAINLY NOT ANY KIND OF THEOCRACY BECAUSE ANY THEOCRACY IS RULE BY AN, ULTIMATELY, SELF-PERPETUATING AND SELF-INTERESTED CLASS OF HUMAN BEINGS.   There is a reason that Jesus said his Kingdom is not of this Earth.  It is an aspiration for something which no human government will be.

That said, whatever Will of God that is to be done on Earth will be done through God's creatures, in regard to anything that human beings can articulate as a code of conduct of human affairs, that Will will be done by us, in our imperfect and inadequate ability to carry that out.

I think that in a country in which the large majority of citizens and others are religious believers, by a large majority believers in the Abrahamic religions or other religions that, I for one believe, are an expression of a similar understanding of the ultimate reality, the point I just made is essential for any progress.

Americans will never change the corruption that was created by the slave-owners and self-interested financiers who wrote the Constitution, wrote the laws that were adopted under it and, in the case of the Supreme Court the lawyers who gave themselves powers to destroy democracy continually by thwarting laws that a more legitimate body adopted and were signed into law by the executive, all of those elected and all of them able to be cast out of office by The Voters.  As the lecture by Paul Finkelman linked to the other day noted, from the start of the Supreme Court the personal wealth and class interests of the slave-owner "justices" had an obvious and direct effect in them wielding their powers, impregnable under the tragically flawed system of the Supreme Court.   The Founders' remedy for wrongdoing through impeachment was one of the first things that was definitely shown to be most obviously ineffective in the early 1800s as it so obviously is today when we cannot even impeach an obvious felon, would-be and nearly was dictator and scumbag due to the other defects of putting that power in the hands of a, first, unelected, then an elected but still outrageously anti-democratically constituted Senate. 

I hope either that Louis Boudin's optimism about democracy is right and we finally get over the Hollywood, pop-history bull shit that we must forever put up with the corruptions baked into and sprinkled on top of our Constitution and change things for the better as a whole or that those sections of the country which,. in a majority,  want equality and democracy once and for all separate ourselves from those who don't, in the majority, and form actual egalitarian democracies from the ruins - TAKING INTO FULL ACCOUNT WHY THE PROMISES OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FAILED IN THE CONSTITUTION THAT THE FOUNDERS GAVE US AND THE FURTHER CORRUPTIONS PUT ON IT, NONE SO BAD AS THOSE THE UNELECTED MEMBERS OF THE SUPREME COURT HAVE FOISTED ON US.