According to Merriam-Webster, to lie means “to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive” or “to create a false or misleading impression.”
A judge might ask, “How do you know when judges lie?” Many attorneys might answer honestly, “Read their opinions.” A judge might ask, “How do you prove judges lie?” Many attorneys might answer honestly, “Show them their opinions.” Sometimes judges do demand, “Prove the judges lied.” An attorney reasonably could answer, “I don’t have to.”
A series of past posts on Black-Collar Crime (Dangerously Careless Speech about the Freedom of Speech Parts I-VIII) already prove the final point in the preceding paragraph. Future posts on Black-Collar Crime will be devoted to doing the same. Another post (The Nexus between Black-Collar Crime and Presidential Crime) also showed how judges’ lies can constitute crimes. So this post illustrates how to prove the lies and crimes of judges.
I have tremendous respect for Chief Justice Roberts, personally and professionally, as well as tremendous respect for the difficulty of his position on today’s U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS). Even so, I have seen every justice on this SCOTUS do things that every one of them knew violated the Constitution (and violated some of the most precious American rights secured by the Constitution). So I cannot be confident they will not knowingly violate the Constitution. I cannot, in good conscience, remain silent about an obvious falsehood that is material to what may be one of the most momentous SCOTUS decisions of our time.
One of the outstanding aspects of our Constitution and the First Amendment is that much of what judges do and say is available to the public. So a transcript of the SCOTUS oral argument on February 8, 2024 in Trump v. Anderson is freely available. It is very well worth bearing in mind (when considering any question by any judge during any oral argument) that the judges had time (and attorneys working for them) to prepare in advance to think quite a lot about each question they asked (and think about the answers thereto). The questions (including how they are asked) often are designed to elicit particular answers.
Before asking a crucial question, Chief Justice Roberts knowingly misrepresented that “the whole point of the Fourteenth Amendment was to restrict state power.” The Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (specifically, to help a former president again assume the powers that he egregiously and viciously abused previously) asserted that particular (and obvious) falsehood for a particular purpose. Chief Justice Roberts asserted that falsehood to elicit an attorney’s agreement that the Fourteenth Amendment is “the last place that” SCOTUS (and America) should “look for authorization for the states” to “enforce the presidential election process.” “That” the Chief Justice badgered, “seems to be a position that is” not merely wrong, but “at war with the whole thrust of the Fourteenth Amendment and [even] very ahistorical.”
Let’s judge for ourselves who and what was “ahistorical” and “at war with the whole thrust of the Fourteenth Amendment.” The true “thrust of the Fourteenth Amendment” was a constitutional punch in the face of the lying, cheating justices (including the Chief Justice) responsible for opinions and so-called precedents such as (but hardly limited to) Dred Scott v. Sandford.
Fortunately, we can judge by the contentions (admissions) of SCOTUS justices in very recent SCOTUS opinions about the Fourteenth Amendment and Dred Scott, itself. These opinions are far from the most relevant evidence. Even so, it is significant that they are very recent and that they were written and read by SCOTUS justices. SCOTUS justices very recently repeatedly considered the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment (emphatically contrasted with Dred Scott) in a series of decisions and opinions.
In April 2022, SCOTUS issued its opinion in United States v. Vaello-Madero, 142 S. Ct. 1539 (2022). Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion in which he addressed at length how SCOTUS (especially with Dred Scott) prompted Congress to write and the People to ratify the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, and that the primary purpose of both amendments was to reverse SCOTUS justices’ lies and deceit in Dred Scott.
“Chief Justice Taney in Dred Scott v. Sandford” clearly “erroneously” contended that “free blacks were” not “citizens” under “the Constitution,” so they had “none of the rights and privileges” of “citizens.” “According to” SCOTUS (in Dred Scott) “free blacks” essentially always were and always would be merely “a subordinate and inferior class of beings” precisely (and only) because “blacks” generally historically “had been subjugated by” a “dominant” group, and as a result of (mere) brutal and brutish domination, they “had no rights or privileges but such as those who held power and the Government might choose to grant them.”
“Senator Stephen Douglas, defending Dred Scott a few months later” emphasized “the object” of considering a person “a citizen:” it was to acknowledge that such person had “the rights, privileges and immunities of a citizen, it being the great fundamental law in our Government, that under the law, citizens are equal in their rights and privileges.”
“Abolitionists agreed” and further insisted that “all persons—black or white—born in the United States were citizens and therefore entitled to equal civil rights.”
“After the Civil War, the Nation again confronted the citizenship status of black Americans.” Initially, Americans precluded treating any people as “slaves in light of the Thirteenth Amendment.” But for some, “the question remained whether” some “native-born men and women were ‘citizens.’ Consistent with Taney’s view in Dred Scott, southern governments rejected that free blacks were citizens” and they “enacted” so-called “Black Codes” that “restricted” the “rights” of free men because of the mere color of their skin.
“In response, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to both repudiate Dred Scott and eradicate the Black Codes.” Still, people who opposed the “reversal of Dred Scott raised questions whether Congress had such authority under the existing Constitution.” So the primary point of “the Fourteenth Amendment” was that it “forever closed the door on Dred Scott” and precluded any such so-called SCOTUS precedent inasmuch as the Fourteenth Amendment “constitutionalized the Civil Rights Act of 1866.” “And during the ratification debates, Republicans continued to publicly advocate that citizenship and equal civil rights were concomitant.”
Mere months later in June 2022, Justice Thomas delivered the opinion for the entire SCOTUS in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022). Not even one justice disputed the following about Dred Scott or the Fourteenth Amendment. In “Dred Scott v. Sandford” then “Chief Justice Taney offered what he thought was a parade of horribles that would result from recognizing” that the Constitution meant what is said. That tactic (presenting a parade of horribles) is the tactic SCOTUS justices are employing (again) to justify violating the Constitution (again).
Even more specifically relevant, Justice Thomas (essentially writing for every current SCOTUS justice) emphasized that in Dred Scott the “Chief Justice” focused on the fact that if “blacks were citizens,” then “they would be entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens.” That was why SCOTUS justices (in Dred Scott) lied about some people not being citizens or even persons.
Every current SCOTUS justice knew that the lies and deceit of the majority of justices in Dred Scott (including the Chief Justice) were why Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment emphasized (finally and for all) exactly what it did: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States” are “citizens;” all citizens are entitled to all “privileges or immunities of citizens,” and no “person” (citizen or not) could be deprived “of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” or denied “equal protection of the laws.”
Finally, at the end of June 2023, Justice Thomas issued another concurring opinion in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harv. Coll., 143 S. Ct. 2141 (2023). That SCOTUS decision is especially relevant because it focused emphatically on the Fourteenth Amendment in an obviously relevant respect.
Justice Thomas’s first paragraph began with this: “In the wake of the Civil War, the [entire] country focused its attention,” in significant part, on “establishing the legal status of newly freed slaves. The Constitution was amended to abolish slavery and proclaim that all persons born in the United States are citizens, entitled to the privileges or immunities of citizenship and the equal protection of the laws. Amdts. 13, 14.” Those amendments were so momentous that they are commonly characterized as the “second founding” of this country, specifically because they clarified (finally and for all) that “[o]ur Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” But Justice Thomas did not stop there in addressing what the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did and were designed to do.
“In its 1864 election platform, the Republican Party [including President Lincoln] pledged to amend the Constitution to accomplish the ‘utter and complete extirpation’ of slavery from ‘the soil of the Republic.’ [ ] Republicans quickly moved to make good on that promise. Congress proposed what would become the Thirteenth Amendment to the States in January 1865, and it was ratified as part of the Constitution later that year.”
“It quickly became clear, however, that further amendment would be necessary to safeguard [the Republicans’] goal. Soon after the Thirteenth Amendment’s adoption, the reconstructed Southern States began to enact ‘Black Codes,’ which circumscribed the newly won freedoms of blacks.”
“Congress responded with the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1866” to “pre-empt the Black Codes.” “The 1866 Act’s evolution further highlights its rule of equality. To start, [in] Dred Scott v. Sandford” SCOTUS “had previously held that blacks” simply were not part of “the people” or U.S. “citizens,” so they “had no rights which” U.S. citizens were “bound to respect.” So the Civil Rights Act of 1866 “effectively overrule[d] Dred Scott and ensure[d] the equality that had been promised to blacks.”
Justice Thomas then reminded SCOTUS of what he had written in 2022 in United States v. Vaello-Madero, above. Next, he emphasized (with his italics) that “[t]he addition of a citizenship guarantee” in the 1866 Act was “evidence[ of Congress’s] intent” to require “equality for all Americans.”
“But opponents argued that Congress’ authority did not sweep so broadly. President Andrew Johnson” (a former slaveholder who inherited the presidency in April 1865 when Lincoln was assassinated ) “contended that Congress lacked authority to pass the measure, seizing on the breadth of the citizenship text and emphasizing state authority over matters of state citizenship.” So “Representative John Bingham” proposed a “constitutional amendment” that “would provide a clear constitutional basis for the 1866 Act” and which also would “ensure that future Congresses would be unable to repeal it.” That was the primary purpose of what “became the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
The primary purpose of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments clearly was not merely to restrict states. It was to essentially overrule Dred Scott and analogous so-called SCOTUS precedent and restrict the power of every public official at any level and in any branch of government to pretend that some people were property and some citizens were not citizens.
Four times after the Fourteenth Amendment, the Constitution was amended to emphasize that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States.” specifically, to “vote” must “not be denied or abridged.” See Amendments XV, XIX, XXIV, XXVI. So the Fourteenth Amendment clearly is a pretty good place to look, not merely for the power, but also for the duty, of all public officials to disqualify a politician from being on a ballot after he essentially tried to disenfranchise a significant number of citizens.