Most of us have known for some time that our personal freedoms have been severely abrogated by administrative fiat. Fiat best describes the arbitrary orders placed upon us. We are not alone in our musings about curtailed constitutional rights, as the thoughts expressed by Supreme Court Justice Alito prove.
Justice Alito said on Thursday, speaking to the virtual convention of the Federalist Society, “we have never before seen restrictions as severe, extensive and prolonged as those experienced for most of 2020.” He went on to explain.
“Think of all the live events that would otherwise be protected by the right to freedom of speech: live speech, conferences, lectures, meetings. Think of worship services, churches closed on Easter Sunday, synagogues closed for Passover on Yom Kippur. Think about access to the courts or the constitutional right to a speedy trial. Trials in federal courts have virtually disappeared in many places. Who could have imagined that? The Covid crisis has served as a sort of constitutional stress test. And in doing so it has highlighted disturbing trends that were already present before the virus struck.”
The Justice then pointed to the trend in which executive actions have increasingly replaced legislation. Instead the means to enact end enforce law is made by governors and administrators, often in secret sessions. He noted that administrative agencies churn out every year huge volumes of regulations that dwarf the statutes enacted by the peoples elected representatives.
Alito referenced a law cobbled together here in my new home state of Nevada. A law, that gives governor Sisolak, intimate of governor Gavin Newsom, a broad mandate, “to perform and exercise such functions, powers and duties as necessary to perform and secure the safety and protection of the civilian population in the event of a technological, natural or manmade emergency or disaster of major proportions.”
To that the justice said, “laws giving an official so much discretion, can of course, be absurd.” Absurd, in my mind, is a mild term for the enormous power grounded in this law. However, Justice Alito furthermore remarked, that after the passing of the pandemic the restrictions must cease, and cannot become a recurring feature of our lives. He said, “All sort of things can be called emergency or disaster of major proportions. Simply slapping on that label cannot provide the ground for our most fundamental rights to be revoked. And whenever the fundamental rights are restricted, the Supreme Court and other courts cannot close their eyes.”
Thank you, Justice Alito! I must remark here, that I would not have known of this call for sanity without an article in The Epoch Times.