By James L. Lambert
March 29, 2005

(AgapePress) - The judiciary in America made it clear last week: they are neither ally nor friend when it comes to cultural issues. While this revelation has just dawned on some conservatives, the liberal trend within the judiciary has been forming for more than 40 years.

This move to the left has been a curious development, particularly because conservatives were a formidable voting bloc in each of the last two decades. The change in the judiciary has been a gradual process during which conservatives and voters have let their guard down when judges were nominated. We have allowed judges to be confirmed without carefully investigating their past to discover their activist tendencies.

The examples are many. Over these last 40 years, we have seen liberal activism take root in the highest courts of the land. Traditionally judges have interpreted law, not made it. And the role of the judiciary was to see the Constitution upheld and properly interpreted. But they have now stepped outside their constitutional authority.

This gradual power grab started in the early 1960s with the historical interpretation of the role of religion. Historians will clearly confirm that America's founding fathers were deeply concerned about the government favoring or endorsing one religion (or denomination) as their own, as had occurred in England. (Evidence the plight of the Pilgrims and the Calvinists, and the reason they left England for America.)

When the U.S. Supreme Court took voluntary prayer out of the schools in 1962, it effectively went outside the Constitution to render its case. At the same time, the high court ignored the reason for Thomas Jefferson's letter noting the "wall of separation," where he addressed one state's denomination's preference over another. Case law and prior high court rulings consistently protected government's actions against religion.

By going outside the Constitution, however, the judiciary embarked upon a dangerous trend. People were equally perplexed several years later (1973) how the court made a constitutional judgment on abortion when nothing like it is even referenced in the Constitution. The Constitution actually delineates life and protection of life -- yet the court saw it differently.

Judicial activism has been the cause of many of these historical reversals -- and they are plenty. On a number of major cases affecting the family, lower-court rulings have evolved over decades and have been simply ignored by activist judges.

We saw it in the "virtual child pornography" decision. We have seen it in the Pledge of Allegiance ruling. We have seen it in the gay marriage rulings in Massachusetts and California. We have seen it in cases where the Bible has been consistently forbidden from classrooms. We have seen it in the effort by conservatives over more than eight years to ban the heinous procedure known as partial-birth abortion. We have seen it constantly across the nation where individuals' right to practice their faith has been violated.

We have seen it in Chief Justice Roy Moore's removal from office in Alabama. We have seen it in many cases where the historical heritage of a region has been ignored, and legal precedent has been waived and ignored by liberal activist judges around the country. We have seen it where terrorists are granted special rights that the Constitution never enumerated. And more recently, we have seen it where a lower court rejected the Justice Department's case against hard-core pornographers (Extreme Associates) -- and where the court now protects cold-blooded killers under 18 from the death penalty.

While a large number of these judges are entrenched in the judicial bureaucracy, it is imperative that conservatives begin to press their elected officials everywhere to appoint constructionist judges. We desperately need judges who will return to their proper role and simply interpret law. The mandate of the court is not to create law, but interpret it.

We know we are on slippery slope when justices cite in their decision such rationale as European law, international law, and -- as stated by Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy -- "America's evolving standards of decency." Such judicial activism must be stopped!