Historically and spiritually, there's a good reason we must face the issue of judicial tyranny. Our world has faced and decided the issues of royal tyranny and parliamentary tyranny in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds in the West. In the 1600's, the English parliament executed a king and put another out of office for going beyond his legal powers. In the 1700's, the American colonies successfully defied the English Parliament which had taken over the sovereign power of the king and become tyrannical in its treatment of the colonies. The sifting out and determination of proper legal roles of different aspects of civil government seems to have followed on the heels of the sifting of the Church and its government during the Reformation. At the same time, the proper roles of Church and State remain unresolved. Also, the proper roles of competing civil governments - national versus local, branches of government like legislative and judicial - are also unresolved. However, with respect to the executive (king) and the legislative (parliament), more has been accomplished, as far as limiting their powers, than what has been accomplished with respect to the judiciary. Interestingly, the judicial branch began as a branch that limited itself and has lately begun to breach the limits it placed upon itself. Can it be trusted to police itself? It is proving that it is not.
Why is that? There's a spiritual answer. Like any idol that competes for the absolute rule that belongs to the one true God only, any institution that becomes divinized will be brought down. God is a jealous God. To apply an attribute of God that is incommunicable, that is, not something He can give to any created being, to any human or human institution is to divinize that human or institution. As mentioned in the first post about America having a problem with judicial tyranny, putting trust in something devised by humans on a par with the trust accorded to God alone is a form of divinization. Nothing can be trusted on the same level as God. The judiciary, however, is unique in that its members are compared in the bible to gods.
"God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods. How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah. Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations." Psalm 82:1-8.
So judging is compared to the act of a god. Even Jesus acknowledges it and uses Psalm 82 to demonstrate that His claim to divinity is not as strange as his critics should think. John 10:34-6. Judges, who must decide life and death issues and act as if they were God punishing the wicked, are delegated such authority by the living God. That does not mean God delegates all of His authority of judging to them. Such absolute power cannot be delegated, or God would not be God; the creator would no longer be distinct from the created. Then all would be god because all could be god.
So what is the limit on the authority of human judges? As legitimate a question as it is, the legal profession is not asking this question because its members cannot conceive of a situation where there would not be chaos, uncertainty, or worse, if judges' orders could be ignored. But we must answer this question, or we face something much worse than chaos and uncertainty. We face the judgment of the jealous God who will stand for nothing and no one coming before Him or even being equated with Him. See "Idols for Destruction" by Herbert Schlossberg. See also Daniel 2 ("And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.").
The next post on this topic will attempt an answer to the questions: What limits are there on the judiciary? And what can other authorities and citizens do about a judge or court that goes beyond its power?
