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The United States was founded as a Republic. That lasted until Marbury v Madison where the Supreme Court usurped the power of the people and the other branches of government.

Today we live in an Oligarcy where our natural rights are rented from a small group of black robed self-styled aristrocrats who believe in their pre-eminent rights to rule us by fiat.

Revolutions have sprung from less.

jim, you mention:
Revolutions have sprung from less

And right you are. The Dred Scott decision, with bad characteristics outline above regarding Slavery and its alledged tie to Property Rights by the Tanney decision had an element that even went further and prompted, somewhat, the Civil War. Recent reading I have done of McDonald indicates that the element was that the decision, in essence, voided the ability of the Congress to prohibit Slavery in the territories, thereby rendering the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. That long standing bastion against the succession beginning, was publically known for the carnage it had averted, through political compromise and prudence. The decision by the court was, according to McDonald, the watershed of public opinion about the Court first, and war second. The court was nolonger seen as above the political fray and an institution capable of such honor that its decisions settled the matter by general regard for its station. It was now a crass political intitution, like any other.

And the war was now seen by all regions as just a matter of time.

"And the War came."

---- is this a crisis for democracy? I doubt it. The system of checks and balances exists to protect against a too-powerful judiciary, just as it corrects for an over-powerful legislature.
(the fate toward which those seeking to end judicial review are barreling rather heedlessly).
Nor is there anything new or radical about the way the Supreme Court is behaving right now.

Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist 78, urged that limits on the legislature "can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice."

Granting the courts the power of constitutional review has been with us since Marbury v. Madison was decided in 1803.

As for the fact that the courts decide most of the most pressing social and political issues of the day, Alexis de Tocqueville observed in 1831 that, "there is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one." Indeed, judges have been deciding cases without regard for the law ever since King Solomon ruled that the contending parties should split that baby.

What aspect of today's crisis over the "imperial judiciary" is, therefore, new and terrifying? Nothing, it seems, but the nomenclature.

DAHLIA LITHWICK

jimkress wrote:
The United States was founded as a Republic.
That lasted until Marbury v Madison where the Supreme Court usurped the power of the people and the other branches of government.

Revolutions have sprung from less.

Art III, Sec 2 says that the USSC's judical power shall extend to all cases, ---- and it shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law & fact, under congressional regulation..

As Lithwick argues, I just don't see our present mess as a constitutional problem. Checks and balances will still work, if the political will exists.. No one has yet "usurped power", imo..

-- There are a lot of factions that want to grab power by legislative or judicial means..

-- And I agree, -- the fact that, "Revolutions have sprung from less", needs to be brought to their attention.

Very forcefully..