eudaemonia

Supreme Court: Authority v. Power

The major issue to be addressed by pundits and candidates alike, is their rationale for the theoretical justification and constitutional ground for judicial displacement of legislative majorities. This sole issue underlies all others. In fact nothing else really matters. It implicates the timeless tension between power and authority in the polity. Thus, to ask for a theoretical justification and constitutional ground for judicial displacement of legislative majorities, is to query the nature of "authority" within American political theory in the first place and constitutional theory in the second. The nature of authority is manifest in the quip about the churlish bull bursting into the proverbial china-shop and therewith demonstrating tremendous power, but no authority.

In similar fashion I am convinced that the Supreme Court has been exercising power in the absence of authority, and consequently spreading a lot of bull. Ensuing posts will begin to unravel the nature of authority within American political theory and then show how constitutional jurisprudence is but a subset of derivate sequitors following from the theoretical concept of sovereignty.

In the spirit of Icarus...lets see how high we can fly!

posted by spelunker @ 6:28 PM