UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

In the Matter of a Judicial Complaint

Case No. 04-24-90094

PETITION FOR RECONSIDERATION

Petitioner John Doe, in propria persona and as a member of the public whose interests

are ostensibly being “protected” here, asks that the Order in this matter be withdrawn, stating

as follows in support of this request:

The major cause of the loss of public confidence in the American judiciary,
however, is the failure of judges to comply with established professional
norms, including rules of conduct specifically prescribed. In brief, it is the
unethical conduct of judges, both on and off the bench, that most concerns
the citizenry.
—Senior Judge Roger J. Miner (2d Cir.)1

The threshold issue in this matter was whether the publication of Judge Ponsor’s essay

“diminish[es] the public’s confidence in the integrity and independence of the judiciary.”

Opinion at 4. This, in turn, pokes the elephant in the room: How is it logically possible to

to diminish what doesn’t exist?

1
Roger J. Miner, Judicial Ethics In the Twenty-First Century: Tracing the Trends, 32 Hofstra L.Rev. 1107,
1108 (2004).

1
 “We the People” have a compelling interest in maintaining an honest and independent

judiciary. To that end, our representatives enacted 28 U.S.C. § 455. And by its terms, it is

to apply to “[a]ny justice … of the United States.” Id. But as the Justices are openly taking

bribes on a galactic scale and flagrantly imposing their naked will under the fraudulent guise

of interpreting the law, their learned colleagues are embarrassingly quiescent. But when a

judge actually does the right thing, you force him to swallow his whistle?

While Petitioner does not agree with him on many legal issues, my guess is that if you’re

getting an “OMG” from Professor Tribe, you’re probably doing it wrong.

ARGUMENT

This argument turns on a proposition of Anglo-American law older than our Republic,

distilled to a sentence by Judge Richard Arnold: “The judicial power to determine law is

a power only to determine what the law is, NOT to invent it.” Anastasoff v. United States,

223 F.3d 898, 901, vacated as moot, 234 F.3d 1054 (8th Cir. 2000) (emphasis added).

While six Justices of the Supreme Court have declared that Donald J. Trump is eligible

to ascend to the Presidency, Trump v. Anderson, 601 U.S. 100 (2024), and enjoys an immun-

ity from criminal prosecution that is truly breathtaking in scope, Trump v. United States, 603

U.S. 593 (2024), the Constitution does not and as such, they had no lawful authority to

rule as they did. Under our system, the courts’ “province is to decide what the law is, not

2
to declare what it should be.” Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 178 (1874). But more to

the point, if a “decision is manifestly absurd or unjust, it is declared, not that such a sentence

was bad law, but that it is not law.” 1 Wm. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of Eng-

land *70 (1765) (emphasis added). “The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they

should be disposed to exercise will instead of judgment, the consequence would equally be

the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body.” The Federalist No. 78, 440

(I. Kramnick ed. 1987) (Alexander Hamilton). To permit judges to do this is to declare that

we are not a nation of laws. Or to distill it to essentials:

The Constitution is NOT what judges say it is;

it is what THE CONSTITUTION says it is.

I. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 101

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is

the first duty of intelligent men.
~George Orwell2

Our Constitution was written for times like these. It is high time we dust it off.

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance

thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United

States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2. “Governments are

instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Decla-

ration of Independence, para. 2 (U.S. 1776). As Lincoln famously declared, "no man is good

enough to govern another man, without the other’s consent,” Abraham Lincoln, Speech (on

the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Springfield, IL), Oct. 16, 1854, and the Framers’ Constitution

marks the outer limit of our consent.

2
George Orwell, The Taming of Power (book review), New Adelphi, Vol. 15-16 (Jan. 1939), at 205.

3
 Thereunder, “We the People of the United States”3 write our own laws, pursuant to the

processes specified therein. We make the big calls, leaving the day-to-day process of law-

making to our legislators. We hire a President to run this leviathan and judges, to resolve

disputes. And we expect our authorized agents to stay in their lanes: “All the officers of

the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law, and are bound to

obey it.” United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220 (1882). James Madison elaborates:

The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds
which separate each department of power may be invariably maintained; but more es-
pecially, that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the
rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the
commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People
who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves, nor by an authority
derived from them, and are slaves.4

Under our system, federal judges are entrusted with the “judicial Power,” U.S. Const. art.

III, § 1, which is not unlimited in scope. For five centuries, it has been universally understood

that the office of the judge "is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make

law, or give law." Francis Bacon, Essays LVI (Of Judicature) (1620). Lord Coke maintained

that "[i]t is the function of a judge not to make, but to declare the law, according to the golden

mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion." 1 E. Coke, Institutes of the

Laws of England 51 (1642). Blackstone adds that a judge is "sworn to determine, not ac-

cording to his own judgments, but according to the known laws.” 1 Blackstone,

3
U.S. Const., preamble (emphasis in original). Under this paradigm, “government” is a simple contract. Sov-
ereignty—the jura summa imperii—was retained by the people, holding it as tenants-in-common. Governments
are our authorized agents, with powers enumerated in constitutions. Our national Constitution (and its prede-
cessor) is a treaty between thirteen co-sovereigns, expressly delegating a portion of their delegated sovereignty.
See e.g., N.H. Const. part 1, art. 7. The people retain the right to revolution, Declaration of Independence, para.
2 (U.S. 1776), N.H. Const. part 1, art. 10, which is unenumerated and protected by the Ninth and Tenth Amend-
ments. The “right” to keep and bear arms and organize into militias is not a right, so much as it is a remedy.
4
James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance (address to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of
Virginia), Jun. 20, 1785), as reprinted in 2 J. Madison, The Writings of James Madison (1783-1787) at 122-23
(emphasis added); see also, The Federalist No. 78.

4
Commentaries at *69. There is no contrary authority.5 And as Alexander Hamilton ob-

serves, this principle is grounded in agency:

There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a dele-
gated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is
void. No [judicial] act therefore contrary to the constitution can be valid. To deny this
would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above
his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves;
that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorise,
but what they forbid.

The Federalist No. 78, p. 438 (Alexander Hamilton). As the legislative power is exclusively

vested in Congress, U.S. Const. art. I, our judges have no lawmaking power. At all. See 28

U.S.C. § 2072 (even the courts’ rulemaking authority lies with Congress).

"Courts are constituted by authority and they can not go beyond the power delegated to

them. If they act beyond that authority, and certainly in contravention of it, their judgments

and orders are regarded as nullities." Vallely v. Northern Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 254 U.S.

348, 353 (1920). The rewriting of the Constitution under the false pretense of interpreting

it is “a flagrant perversion of the judicial power.” Heiner v. Donnan, 285 U.S. 312, 331

(1932). In the timeless words of Justice Holmes, it is ‘an unconstitutional assumption of

powers by courts of the United States which no lapse of time or respectable array of opinion

5
Mindful that “the discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny," 4 C. Gibbon, The History of the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 385 (1776-89) (Philips Samson, and Co. 1856), Alexander Hamilton
argued that to "avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that [judges] should be bound by
strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case before them."
The Federalist No. 78, 470 (Hamilton).
Concurrences would fill a Brandeis brief. Jefferson envisioned the judge as “a mere machine,” expecting
that the law “be dispensed equally & impartially to every description of men.” Thomas Jefferson, Letter (to
Edmund Pendleton), Aug. 26, 1776. Professor (Justice) Story adds that “A more alarming doctrine could not
be promulgated by any American court, than that it was at liberty to disregard all former rules and decisions,
and to decide for itself [what the law is], without reference to the settled course of antecedent principles.” 1 J.
Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States 350 (1838). As in all but the most exotic cases,
the “law” is established, the judge was expected to be little more than an administrator, playing what Professor
Llewellyn called “the game of matching cases.” Karl Llewellyn, The Bramble Bush 49 (1960).

5
should make us hesitate to correct.” Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 79 (1938).

There is no contrary authority.

And under our system, judges are expected to police each other. There are other remedies

that the citizenry may wield, but every judge swears fealty to the Constitution, 28 U.S.C. §

453, as opposed to demonstrably irregular and even flagrantly criminal decisions, see e.g.,

18 U.S.C. § 3, issued by the dictators “upstairs.”

II. OUR JUDICIARY HAS NO REPUTATION WORTH PROTECTING.

When guilds police themselves, it never ends well. See e.g., Douglas J. Slawson, Outrage

in Boston: The Sexual Abuse Scandal and the Downfall of Cardinal Bernard Law, 128-4

Amer. Catholic Studies 55 (Winter 2017). Judicial self-discipline is no exception. Accord-

ing to Senior Judge John Kane of the District of Colorado, it "is a 'kiss your sister' operation

that hasn't worked and won't as long as judges are covering one another's butts. The present

system is ineffectual and I think that could be demonstrated by the very sorry record." Ronald

D. Rotunda, The Courts Need This Watchdog, Wash. Post, Dec. 21, 2006.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act is a spectacular

failure. As the Houston Chronicle reported, judges only sanctioned their colleagues seven

times in ~6,000 complaints—a lousy batting average in any league. Lise Olsen, Secrecy May

Help Protect Misbehaving Judges, Houston Chronicle, Dec. 13, 2009, at A-1. With a batting

average of 0-for-671 (old figures) in the Fifth Circuit, the Judicial Councils ought to quit and

take up canasta.

What the Judicial Councils let go for sake of appearance is simply breathtaking. If you

give preferential treatment to a friend from the bench, you can rest assured that your homies

at the Circuit level will commit felonies to protect you if they can and the system, if they

6
can’t. As Galveston Daily News editor Heber Taylor caustically writes, in ‘connecting the

dots’ regarding disgraced United States District Judge Samuel B. Kent:

In 2001, there was grumbling about favoritism in Kent’s court on Galveston Island. The
Southern District removed 85 cases from the court. The attorney on all 85 was Richard
Melancon, Kent’s close friend and the host of the reception for the judge’s wedding.

The judicial system looked into it and moved the cases. The judges in charge told the
public the reason was a heavy caseload. ...

Last week, after Kent was sentenced to prison for lying about the assaults, the House
Judiciary Committee agreed to conduct an inquiry to determine whether he should be
impeached.

That response is inadequate because it’s incomplete. What’s missing is an inquiry into
the way the judicial system itself responded to complaints. ...

Before the judicial council took any significant action against Kent—action, say, that
would have cost him a single paycheck—The Daily News found that 671 complaints
had been filed against judges in the 5th Circuit since 2000. Not one had resulted in
formal discipline.

We wonder whether members of Congress have faith in that system. We wonder how
they could possibly ask us—the people who are served by this court—to trust it.6

Let’s put this in proper perspective. Eighty-five litigants. Eighty-five litigants, denied

their constitutional right to have their cases heard by a fair and independent tribunal. Eighty-

five separate acts of honest services mail fraud. E.g., United States v. Welch, 327 F.3d 1081

(10th Cir. 2003) (elements of honest services mail fraud). And one felony, committed by

judges charged with ensuring that incidents like these do not happen.

Misprision of felony has four elements: (1) commission of the felony alleged; (2) the

accused had full knowledge of that fact; (3) the accused failed to notify authorities; and (4)

the accused took an affirmative step to conceal the crime. United States v. Baez, 732 F.2d

780 (10th Cir. 1984). But being a federal judge means never having to obey the law; that’s

6
Heber Taylor, Judicial Discipline Needs a Full Probe, Galveston County Daily News (TX), May 15, 2009
(accessed via NewsBank; copy on file; emphasis added).

7
how we got Edward Nottingham, Manuel Real, and Thomas Porteous, among others. "Heavy

case-load?" No. The judges on the Fifth Circuit obviously knew what they were doing, and

that what they were doing was a crime. And of course, Judge Kent was not prosecuted for

criminal malfeasance on the bench but rather, for criminal sexual abuse. Stewart M. Powell,

Judge Kent reports to prison hospital in Massachusetts, Houston Chronicle, Jun. 15, 2009.

Lather, rinse, repeat. In those rare instances when investigations are undertaken, the more

common occurrence is one in which the investigation is deliberately “tanked,” and/or the

offending judge is given a soft slap on the wrist. In connection with a high-profile discipli-

nary investigation involving Judge Manuel Real, who purportedly extended judicial favors

to a “comely” female criminal defendant, Judge Kozinski wrote IN DISSENT:

Finally, I find the district judge's slippery statement of contrition risible. As the majority
notes, we wrote the district judge and offered to close the matter without further action,
provided he acknowledge his "improper conduct" and "pledge not to repeat it." This is
consistent with the accepted practice of giving judges subject to a valid disciplinary
complaint a chance to mitigate or correct their misconduct by an open acknowledgment
of wrongdoing, an apology and a pledge to mend their ways.7

Kozinski went on to point out that

the judge's conduct here caused real harm. It certainly harmed innocent creditors to the
tune of $50,000 or more. Worse, it harmed public confidence in the fair administration
of justice in the courts of this circuit. The prohibition against ex parte communications,
rules of procedure, principles of law-all of these are not trinkets that judges may discard
whenever they become a nuisance. Rather, they are the mainstays of our judicial system,
our guarantee to every litigant that we will administer justice, as our oath requires,
"without respect to persons." 28 U.S.C. § 453.8

The Real case graphically illustrates how farcical the American system of judicial disci-

pline has become. Judges have become inured to judicial crime because every judge engages

in it on an industrial scale. If I could point to one moment where America died, it is when

7
In re Complaint of Judicial Misconduct, 425 F.3d 1179, 1194 (9th Cir. 2005) (Kozinski, J., dissenting).
8
Id. at 1197.

8
the Eighth Circuit forced Judge Richard Arnold to withdraw Anastasoff. In his original rul-

ing, Arnold encapsulates the constitutional flaw inherent in nonpublication rules in one sen-

tence: “‘We may have decided this question the opposite way yesterday, but that does not

bind us today.’” Anastasoff v. United States, 223 F.3d 898, 904 (8th Cir. 2000), vacated as

moot, 234 F.3d 1054 (8th Cir. 2000). "A more alarming doctrine could not be promulgated

by any American court, than that it was at liberty to disregard all former rules and decisions,

and to decide for itself, without reference to the settled course of antecedent principles.” J.

Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 377 (1833).

Arnold didn’t even mewl in protest. He knew better. And so do you.

There isn’t a judge on the federal bench who doesn’t know how foul your work product

is. That 95% of “your” opinions were merely delivered, and rarely even read. Judge Michael

McConnell actually dismissed a matter on jurisdictional grounds WITH PREJUDICE. Har-

rington v. Wilson, No. 06-1418 (10th Cir. Jun. 7. 2007) (withdrawn). That is not the kind of

mistake a first year Civil Procedure student is permitted to make. But federal appeals court

is like Billy’s Bang Bus: “When you are a federal judge, they let you do it.”

Sloth. Indolence. Arrogance. The federal judge’s calling card.9

9
Your work product was so awful that the only rational argument for judicial immunity—that safeguards in
the judicial system are sufficient for “controlling unconstitutional conduct,” Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478,
512 (1978)—is no longer valid. E.g., Alex Kozinski, Letter (to Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr.), Jan. 16, 2004 at 5
(~150 rulings in a two-day session); Perfunctory Justice; Overloaded Federal Judges Increasingly Are Resort-
ing to One-Word Rulings, Des Moines Register, Mar. 26, 1999, at 12 (fifty appeals decided in two hours);
Stephen Breyer, Administering Justice in the First Circuit, 24 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 29, 32-33 (1990) (typical
appeal “takes only a little of their time”). If your case turned on a fine or novel point of law, you had no hope
of relief.
The well-heeled and those with cases that pique the judges’ interest still get limousine service, but like Rosa
Parks, lesser men are forced to sit in the back of the judicial bus. Indeed, it is rare that appellate judges even
read the bulk of the opinions issued under their name, to say nothing of reading the briefs and grappling with
actual issues raised therein. Bottom line, if You Judges have enough time to write law review articles and give
speeches, you have enough time to read briefs.

9
 While a fish rots from the head first, the rest of our judicial tuna is unsuitable for feeding

to your cat. Some years ago, on Judge Richard Kopf’s old blog, retired Judge Nancy Gertner

admitted that federal judges are quite literally trained on "how you get rid of [pro se civil

rights] cases."10 Every act is a federal felony. Kopf himself even admitted to not reading

briefs—and that is at the trial court level.

Some years ago, Colorado had its very own little Eliot Spitzer scandal—only more sala-

cious. Police busted an upscale escort service called Denver Players; according to a call girl

who went public, these fine ladies serviced men within the friendly confines of the VERY

exclusive Denver Club for well north of $1,000 a night. Problem is, one of the more active

habitués was former Chief Judge Ed Nottingham of the District of Colorado, who couldn’t

possibly afford his weekly trysts on a federal judge’s salary alone.11

10
Nancy Gertner (blog reply), Civil jury trials, summary judgment, employment cases and the Northern District
of Georgia study–preliminary observations, Hercules and the Umpire (blog of Senior Judge Kopf, Dist. of
Nebraska), Oct. 22, 2013, at http://herculesandtheumpire.com/2013/10/22/civil-jurytrials-summary-judgment-
employment-cases-and-the-northern-district-of-georgia-study-preliminary-observations/ (copy on file). Judge
Bennett of the Northern District of Iowa earned the nickname “The Terminator” for summarily dismissing pro
se employment law cases. Mark W. Bennett, Essay: From the “No Spittin’, No Cussin’ and No Summary Judg-
ment” Days of Employment Discrimination Litigation to the “Defendant’ s Summary Judgment Affirmed With-
out Comment” Days: One Judge’ s Four-Decade Perspective, 57 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 685, 688 & n. 11 (2012–
2013).
11
Nottingham’s sin was straightforward: While in chambers, he was playing with something in his briefs when
he should have been reading briefs. He lived large, blowing $3,000 (excluding cash tips for the dancers) in a
night of drunken debauchery at the Diamond Cabaret gentlemen’s club that he claims that he didn’t even re-
member—lending a new meaning to the phrase, "sober as a judge." Felisa Cardona, Feds Grill Nacchio Judge's
Ex-Wife, Denver Post, Aug. 11, 2007; Judge issues statement on strip club visits, Summit Daily News (AP),
Aug. 11, 2007. He was a habitué at top-drawer restaurants like Elway’s Steak House, where a dinner and wine
could easily set you back north of $100 per person. Al Lewis, Uncover Naked Truth About Judge, Denver Post,
Oct. 12, 2007. Divorce records also came to light showing that he been trolling for skank during office hours
at adultfriendfinder.com, a graphic swingers’ site:
"When I asked about the dating service, he turned around in his chambers, and he hit his computer and
he told me all about the dating service; it was a porn site," [then-third wife Marcie] Jaeger testified in the
divorce proceeding. She was questioned about whether the site was on the computer display, and she
responded, "Yes, it was.” [Cardona, supra.]
Funny as hell, but that’s not a crime. Let’s get to the actual crime.

“Sources tell 9Wants to Know the [house of prostitution] catered to prominent clients including judges [note
the plural] lawyers, businessmen, athletes and politicians ... The driver told 9NEWS he took prostitutes to meet
Judge Nottingham at two locations in the Denver area about 10 times during the summer of 2007 ...The driver

10
 And of course, the Fourth Circuit is hardly immune. Retired Judge Richard Posner took

Judge David Faber of the District of Maryland to task for cutting and pasting “his” opinion

in a pro se case from the Government’s brief. Reply Brief, Bond v. United States, No. 17-

2150 (4th Cir. filed May 14, 2018). Federal appellate courts are de facto certiorari courts,

where review of appeals filed by disfavored litigants—especially, pro se litigants—generally

take less than ten minutes. The judicial output is so uniformly abysmal, Judge Kozinski

called it “inedible sausage,” unfit for human consumption. Tony Mauro, Difference of Opin-

ion, Legal Times, Apr. 12, 2004. Many of the summary decisions are not just wrong, but

often comically so. But the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is more of a national disgrace

than an appellate court, as its reversal rate was a stunning 4.0%. U.S. Courts of Appeals—

says the women returned from their meeting with the judge with $300 or $400 in cash [the tip] per visit.”
Jeffrey Wolf, et al., Chief federal judge investigated for alleged involvement with prostitutes, 9News.com, Mar.
7, 2008. And by all accounts, Nottingham spent a lot of time in those expensive saddles. Another courtesan
claimed that "she had sex with Judge Nottingham for $250 to $300 an hour once a week from February 2003
through November 2004 at the former escort agency Bada Bing of Denver." Sara Burnett, Nottingham a No-
Show Today After Report of Resignation, Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 16, 2008 (emphasis added). It is worth
noting that "Judge Nottingham married [third] wife Marcie Jaeger, on Valentine's Day 2004," Amy Herdy, et
al., FBI Questions Ex-Wife of Federal Chief Judge, 9News.com, at http://www.9news.com/news/arti-
cle.aspx?storyid=75253 (no date given for publication of story), indicating that he didn’t even stop when he
became a newlywed.
This, in turn, begs an obvious question. These ladies did not cum cheap. As he was patronizing Eliot Spitzer-
class courtesans on a weekly basis for years, something he could not possibly have afforded on a judge’s sal-
ary—his EIGA forms claimed no other significant source of income. See, Edward W. Nottingham, 2003-07
Financial Disclosure Reports. Disclosure reports for the years 2003-07 acquired from http://www.judi-
cialwatch.org/judge/nottingham-edward-w; as he is no longer a judge, they were removed from the site, but
copies were retained. And even if he had spent roughly half of his $10,000/month take-home on hookers, it is
something his new wife would have noticed. Herdy, FBI Questions Ex-Wife, supra (Jaeger had unfettered ac-
cess to the family finances).

By process of elimination, the Judge was taking bribes, either in cash or in-kind.

If the judge was taking bribes, somebody was making them. And you would presume that this is something
that federal authorities would want to find out. Threaten him with hard time in Club Fed for taking bribes and
honest services fraud, and he would have sung like Whitney Houston. But as was the case with Clarence
Thomas, the Feds looked the other way. The worst publicly-disclosed allegation against him—that he allegedly
tampered with a material witness, Deborah Sherman, Counsel investigating chief judge's past, 9News.com, Oct
27, 2008, athttp://www.9news.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=102682&catid=188, see 18 U.S.C. § 1512—was
based purely on “he said, she said” evidence And despite this, he wasn’t even disciplined by the Colorado
bar—though his professional profile conveniently elides the time that he spent on the bench. https://www.li-
censedlawyer.org/Find-a-Lawyer/Profile/u/2000363/Edward-Nottingham (Bar #4498) (screenshot saved).

11
Decisions in Cases Terminated on the Merits, by Nature of Proceeding—During the 12-

Month Period Ending September 30, 2013 tbl. B-5 (2013). By stark contrast, back in 1945,

when judges still read briefs, held hearings, and wrote their own opinions, the national re-

versal rate was a respectable 27.9%. Dir. of the Admin. Off. of U.S. Cts., Ann. Report 70

tbl.B1 (1945). In short, your error rate is over 80%.

And it is not because your trial courts are better. Rather, it is a reflection on your criminal

incompetence as a Circuit. As Judge Murnaghan openly admitted, “it is well known that

judges may put considerably less effort into opinions that they do not intend to publish.

Because these opinions will not be binding precedent in any court, a judge may be less care-

ful about his legal analysis, especially when dealing with a novel issue of law.” Wilson v.

Layne, 141 F.3d 111, 124 n. 6 (4th Cir. 1998) (Murnaghan, J., dissenting).

Nor has the situation improved over time. “Very few cases against judges are deeply

investigated, and very few judges are disciplined in any way. … In six of the past 11 years,

not a single judge was reprimanded, suspended or otherwise sanctioned for misconduct.”

Joan Biskupic, CNN Investigation: Sexual misconduct by judges kept under wraps, CNN,

Jan. 26, 2018 (emphasis added). As the Breyer Commission observed a decade earlier, “a

system that relies for investigation solely upon judges themselves risks a kind of undue

‘guild favoritism’ through inappropriate sympathy with the judge’s point of view or de-em-

phasis of the misconduct problem.” Stephen Breyer, et al., Implementation of the Judicial

Conduct and Disability Act of 1980: A Report to the Chief Justice (Sept. 2006) at 1. Judge

Kane asserted that, while considering a complaint where a district judge was being investi-

gated for soliciting a bribe from an attorney who appeared before him often, one of his col-

leagues said: “'John, think about it. The next time it could be you or me. We've got to stick

12
together.' " Rotunda, supra at A-29 (emphasis added); see Cleavinger v. Saxner, 474 U.S.

193, 204 (1985) (re: favoritism).

As chance would have it, Harvie Wilkinson—who is still infesting your bench—served

on the Breyer Commission. Speaking for a unanimous Court, Justice Ginsburg declared that

a pure "question of law" must be reviewed de novo—not “abuse of discretion,” but de novo

review. Elder v. Holloway, 510 U.S. 510, 516 (1994). Wilkinson is alleged to be a constitu-

tional scholar of national repute, who has acknowledged that it “is the solemn duty of judges

on the inferior federal courts to follow, both in letter and in spirit, rules and decisions with

which we may not agree.” J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Of Guns, Abortions, and the Unraveling

Rule of Law, 95 Va. L. Rev. 253, 255 (2009). When confronted with an appeal raising a

pure question of law—whether the current regime of “discretionary certiorari” is constitu-

tional—he signed off on an opinion which stated, without any citation whatsoever to support

it, that “[w]e have reviewed the record and conclude that the district court did not abuse its

discretion in finding [Appellant’s] complaint frivolous and in dismissing the action on that

basis.” Smith v. Kagan, No. 15-1347 (4th Cir. Sept. 21, 2015) (slip op. at 3).

To understand the sheer idiocy of the Wilkinson Panel’s decision, a little legal history is

in order. In one of his famous lectures on comparative law, Article III author Justice James

Wilson noted that our Supreme Court was modeled after the English court of King’s Bench,

which had a duty to "superintend and govern" inferior tribunals, thereby ensuring fealty to

the law of the land. In so doing, he explained the problem he intended to address:

In every judicial department, well arranged and well organized, there should be a regu-
lar, progressive, gradation of jurisdiction; and one supreme tribunal should superintend
and govern all the others.

An arrangement in this manner is proper for two reasons. 1. The supreme tribunal
produces and preserves a uniformity of decision through the whole judicial system.

13
 2. It confines and supports every inferior court within the limits of its just jurisdic-
tion.

If no superintending tribunal of this nature were established, different courts might

adopt different and even contradictory rules of decision; and the distractions, spring-
ing from these different and contradictory rules, would be without remedy and without
end. Opposite determinations of the same question, in different courts, would be
equally final and irreversible.

2 Works of James Wilson 149-50 (James D. Andrews ed., 1896) (emphasis added).

At common law, certiorari is a supervisory writ, apprising a superior court of “jurisdic-

tional error, failure to observe some applicable requirement of procedural fairness, fraud and

‘error of law on the face of the record.’” Craig v South Australia (1995) 184 CLR 163, 175

(H.C. Austl.) (citations omitted). “The underlying policy is that all inferior courts and au-

thorities have only limited jurisdiction or powers and must be kept within their legal bounds.

This is the concern of the Crown, for the sake of orderly administration of justice, but it is a

private complaint which sets the Crown in motion.” Surya Dev Rai v. Ram Chander Rai,

(2003) 6 SCC 675 (India). And at the risk of repetition, Justice Story cautions that "[a] more

alarming doctrine could not be promulgated by any American court, than that it was at liberty

to disregard all former rules and decisions, and to decide for itself, without reference to the

settled course of antecedent principles.” Story, Commentaries at § 377 (1833). Litigants are

entitled to rely on binding precedent, and to invoke its protections at need. Moragne v. States

Marine Lines, 398 U.S. 375, 403 (1970) (reliance interest in “binding” precedent); see Mar-

bury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 163 (1803). As it was and is a matter of first impression, it is

hard to imagine how the claim could be seen as “frivolous.”12

12
The statutory basis for the claim is 28 U.S.C. § 1361, which provides: "[t]he district courts shall have origi-
nal jurisdiction of any action in the nature of mandamus to compel an officer or employee of the United States
or any agency thereof to perform a duty owed to the plaintiff." “Supreme Court Justice” is an office; the men
and women in those positions are agents, entrusted with the power of that office. As they are mere wo/men
and not gods, they can be ordered by a mere district court judge to do their jobs.

14
 As an egregious and inexplicable legal error resulting in the denial of a litigant’s day in

court that remains uncorrected is "prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration

of the business of the courts," 28 U.S.C. § 351(a),13 an appropriate complaint was filed with

the Circuit against Judge Hilton. But federal judges would rather sodomize their daughters’

corpses than acknowledge that they are committing felonies on an industrial scale.14

“We’ve got to stick together.” Judicial ethics has devolved into a contradiction in terms.

As the late Professor Monroe Freedman, one of the nation’s leading scholars on judicial

ethics, observed:

Frankly, I have had more than enough of judicial opinions that bear no relationship
whatsoever to the cases that have been filed and argued before the judges. I am talking

It gets worse. The court below purported to dismiss this matter pursuant to the Prisoner Litigation Reform
Act of 1996 (“the PLRA”), Pub. L. No. 104-134, 110 Stat. 1321-71 (1996)—which, by its terms, only applies
to lawsuits by prisoners filing in forma pauperis. As Appellant has never been a prisoner in a correctional
institution, he had no colorable authority to act pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2). It was plain error. See also,
Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 325 (1989) (arguable basis in law or fact sufficient to satisfy statute).
13
The remedy for plain error is a Rule 59 motion; As Judge Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit explains,
Judicial action taken without any arguable legal basis ... is far worse than simple error or abuse of discre-
tion; it's an abuse of judicial power that is "prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of
the business of the courts." See 28 U.S.C. § 351 (a); Shaman, Lubet & Alfini, supra. § 2.02, at 37 ("Serious
legal error is more likely to amount to misconduct than a minor mistake. The sort of evaluation that
measures the seriousness of legal error is admittedly somewhat subjective, but the courts seem to agree
that legal error is egregious when judges deny individuals their basic or fundamental procedural rights.");
In re Quirk, 705 So. 2d 172, 178 (La. 1997) ("A single instance of serious, egregious legal error, par-
ticularly one involving the denial to individuals of their basic or fundamental rights, may amount
to judicial misconduct." (citing Jeffrey M. Shaman, Judicial Ethics. 2 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 1, 9 (1988))).

In re Complaint of Judicial Misconduct, 425 F.3d 1179, 1185 (9th Cir. 2005) (Kozinski, J., dissenting; empha-
sis added).
14
The Panel’s citation of and reliance on In re Judicial Conduct and Disability, 517 F. 3d 558 (Jud. Conf. 2008)
is simply breathtaking, as it appears that no one bothered to read the damn decision. Therein, it is provided (at
page 562) that
... a cognizable misconduct complaint based on allegations of a judge not following prevailing law or the
directions of a court of appeals in particular cases must identify clear and convincing evidence of willful-
ness, that is, clear and convincing evidence of a judge's arbitrary and intentional departure from
prevailing law based on his or her disagreement with, or willful indifference to, that law.
In the complaint submitted to this body, there were four identifiable procedural flagrant fouls: invoking a statute
that any reasonably competent judge would know to be inapplicable, failure to provide a statement of reasons
in dismissing a matter of first impression where the reasons for so doing are not obvious on the record, cf., id.
at 561, openly flouting the precedent of your Circuit, and refusing to correct these obvious errors upon a motion
for reconsideration. How “clear and convincing” does the evidence have to be?

15
 about judicial opinions that falsify the facts of the cases that have been argued,
judicial opinions that make disingenuous use or omission of material authorities, judi-
cial opinions that cover up these things with no-publication and no-citation rules.15

Professor Llewellyn adds that judges routinely “manhandl[e] ... the facts of the pending

case, or of the precedent, so as to make it falsely appear that the case in hand falls under a

rule which in fact it does not fit, or especially that it falls outside of a rule which would lead

in the instant case to a conclusion the court cannot stomach.” Karl Llewellyn, The Common

Law Tradition: Deciding Appeals 133 (1960). Judge Kozinski accuses his colleagues of “us-

ing [their] power as federal judges to constitutionalize [their] personal preferences,” Silveira

v. Lockyer, 328 F. 3d 567, 569 (9th Cir. 2003) (Kozinski, J., dissenting from denial of hearing

en banc); concurrences would fill a Brandeis brief. E.g., Maura D. Corrigan [then, the Chief

Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court] and J. Michael Thomas, "Dice-Loading" Rules of

Statutory Interpretation, 57 N.Y.U. Ann. Survey of Amer. Law 231 (2003); Robert H. Bork,

Our Judicial Oligarchy, 67 First Things 21, 24 (Nov. 1996); Benjamin Wittes, “Without

Precedent,” 296-2 Atlantic Monthly 39 (Sept. 2005) (relating trenchant remarks of Judge

Silberman of the D.C. Court of Appeals, and Judge Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit); Patricia

M. Wald [former Chief Judge of the D.C. Circuit], The Rhetoric Of Results and the Results

of Rhetoric: Judicial Writings, 62 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1371, 1374 (1995); Richard S. Arnold

[Eighth Circuit], Unpublished Opinions: A Comment, 1 J. of App. Prac. & Process 219, 222

(1999); Anthony D’Amato, The Ultimate Injustice: When a Court Misstates the Facts, 11

Cardozo L.R. 1313, 1345 (1990) (case study), et al. ad nauseum.

Judges committing felonies? ¡No problemo! Judges embarrassing other judges for doing

embarrassing things? CALL OUT THE GENDARMES!!! The only time you judges seem

15
Monroe Freedman, Speech (to the Seventh Annual Judicial Conference of the United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit), May 24, 1989, reprinted in 128 F.R.D. 409, 439 (emphasis added).

16
to get a boner is when someone busts off an off-color joke, and it somehow makes its way

into the press. Biskupic, CNN Investigation, supra.; Memorandum, In re: Complaint of Ju-

dicial Misconduct, Nos. 09-12-90026, 09-12-90032 (9th Cir. Jud. Coun. filed Jan. 17, 2014).

III. THE SINS OF POPE SAMUEL

Nothing diminishes the public’s confidence in the integrity and independence of the ju-

diciary quite like untoward judicial conduct, and to not put too fine a spin on it, Samuel Alito

is a walking crime scene. Flying a flag upside-down in the wake of a violent insurrection is

definitely below-average, and a judge who displays such a profound lack of judgment prob-

ably doesn’t belong within a time zone of the Supreme Court. But as this examination of

select portions of Justice Alito’s jurisprudence reveals, it is hardly his worst transgression.

1. Snyder: Making Bribery Great Again!

You couldn’t make this up. Six United States Supreme Court Justices, who stand credibly

accused of taking bribes from billionaires on an industrial scale, used their high offices to

make federal law safe for bribery. Snyder v. United States, No. 23–108, ___ U.S. ___ (2024).

And when you have been taking bribes “gratuities” on an industrial scale, you have a pow-

erful incentive to do so. The legal analysis is similar to that of Fischer, infra, but when you

17
can reduce it to a meme, an in-depth critique seems like over-kill. But this is about Justices

taking bribes and the commission of tax fraud (bribes are taxable income, and gifts are tax-

able to the donor); if power is addictive, a seat on the Supreme Court is crystal meth.

2. Fischer v. United States16: The Jailbreak.

The crime alleged in Fischer consists of four elements: (1) the defendant must “obstruct,

influence, or impede” (2) an official proceeding (3) “corruptly,” (4) committing acts not cov-

ered by 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) (c)(1). On its face, clause (c)(2) is a “generally phrased residual

clause.” And it must be noted that Chief Justice Roberts—the apparent ringleader of this

judicial crime spree, Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak, How Roberts Shaped Trump’s Supreme

Court Winning Streak, N.Y. Times, Sept. 15, 2024—authored the opinion. Forty years ago,

the Court unanimously upheld a similar generally phrased residual clause in the civil RICO

statute, observing that "the fact that RICO has been applied in situations not expressly antic-

ipated by Congress does not demonstrate ambiguity. It demonstrates breadth” and “this de-

fect—if defect it is—is inherent in the statute as written, and its correction must lie with

Congress.” Sedima, SP RL v. Imrex Co., 473 US 479, 499 (1985) (emphasis added). Thus,

at the time of Fischer, it was well-settled law that broad residual clauses were constitutional,

and the Conspiring Justices were fully cognizant of this fact.17

At the Circuit level, Judge Pan cited not one but four opinions written by Defendant

Thomas. United States v. Fischer, 64 F. 4th 329, 335 (D.C.Cir. 2023) (citations omitted).

16
United States v. Fischer, No. 1:21-cr-00234 (CJN) (Mar. 15, 2022) (dismissing the §1512(c)(2) obstruction
count), rev’d, 64 F. 4th 329 (D.C. Cir. 2023), Fischer v. United States, rev’d, No. 23–5572, 603 U.S. ____
(2024).
17
See e.g., Republic of Iraq v. Beaty, 556 U.S. 848, 129 S.Ct. 2183, 2191 (2009) (citation omitted); Harrington
v. Purdue Pharma L.P., No. 23–124, 603 U.S. ___ (Jun. 27, 2024) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting; citation omitted),
slip op. at 38; Garland v. Cargill, No. 22-976, 602 U.S. __ (Jun. 14, 2024) (Alito, J., concurring), slip op. at 1.

18
Following the guidance he provided, Judge Pan reasonably concluded that “[u]nder the most

natural reading of the statute, § 1512(c)(2) applies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an

official proceeding, other than the conduct that is already covered by § 1512(c)(1),” Id., 64

F.4th at 336, further notes that [t]he Seventh and Eighth Circuits have both acknowledged the

expansive ambit of subsection (c)(2),” and “our peer circuits have applied the statute to reach

a wide range of obstructive acts, not just those limited to tampering with documents or ob-

jects.” Id., 64 F.4th at 337 (citing eleven pre-January 6 instances).

Based on FOUR opinions written by Justice Thomas spread over nearly thirty years and

a 2009 unanimous opinion written by the redoubtable Justice Scalia reiterating law that had

been settled for nearly forty years, it appears that Thomas was of the opinion that “generally

phrased residual clauses” were constitutionally permissible and intended by Congress. So,

what changed? The only discernible differences between the insurrection on January 6, 2021

and the other instances are that Thomas’ wife Ginni may have criminal liability, Ewan

Palmer, Ginni Thomas 'May Have Crossed the Line'—Lawyers on Fake Electors Plot,

Newsweek, Jul. 25, 2023, and Thomas’ patron is one of the individuals facing criminal scru-

tiny; both are clear grounds for recusal under 28 U.S.C. § 455. And the same can certainly

be said for Mr. Alito. The only discernible differences between the insurrection on January

6, 2021 and the other instances for Mr. Alito is his radical political views, as captured on

video by Lauren Windsor.18

18
Justice Alito questions possibility of political compromise in secret recording, ABC-10 Sacramento (AP),
Jun. 11, 2024, https://www.abc10.com/article/news/nation-world/justice-alito-secret-recording/507-7cf4d8ec-
190d-48e8-b04c-01191d075f61; Matt Naham, Alito neighbor says justice is either ‘mistaken’ or ‘outright ly-
ing’ about upside-down flag timeline, leading to calls for ‘false statements’ probe, Law & Crime, Jun. 6, 2024,
https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/alito-neighbor-says-justice-is-either-mistaken-or-outright-lying-
about-upside-down-flag-timeline-leading-to-calls-for-false-statements-probe/; Jodi Kantor, et al., Another Pro-
vocative Flag Was Flown at Another Alito Home, N.Y. Times, May 22, 2024.

19
 In this X-rated bacchanal of outcome-driven jurisprudence, even co-conspirator Barrett

had to spit instead of swallow:

The Court does not dispute that Congress’s joint session qualifies as an “official pro-
ceeding”; that rioters delayed the proceeding; or even that Fischer’s alleged conduct
(which includes trespassing and a physical confrontation with law enforcement) was
part of a successful effort to forcibly halt the certification of the election results. Given
these premises, the case that Fischer can be tried for “obstructing, influencing, or im-
peding an official proceeding” seems open and shut. So why does the Court hold oth-
erwise?

Because it simply cannot believe that Congress meant what it said.

Fischer v. United States, 603 U. S. ____ (2024) (Barrett, J., dissenting; emphasis added),

slip op. at 1.19

19
The larger conspiracy to protect Trump at all costs appears to be an all-hands-on-deck enterprise among
Trump appointees. Commentators have expressed grave concern that the right-wing of the “Court” intends to
use Fischer v. United States, Dkt. # 23-5572 (U.S. filed Sept. 11, 2023) as a vehicle for decriminalizing the
January 6 insurrection. E.g., Ian Millhiser, The Supreme Court will weigh in on the January 6 insurrection.
What could possibly go wrong?, Vox, Mar. 25, 2024; Amy Howe, Justices divided over Jan. 6 participant’s
call to throw out obstruction charge, SCOTUSblog (Apr. 16, 2024, 4:34 PM), https://www.sco-
tusblog.com/2024/04/justices-divided-over-jan-6-participants-call-to-throw-out-obstruction-charge/.
Predictably, in Fischer, Trump appointee Carl Nichols, who also did a solid for Trump lieutenant Steve
Bannon, cf., Robert Legare, Steve Bannon's prison sentence delayed as he appeals conviction, CBS News,
November 7, 2022, at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steve-bannons-prison-sentence-delayed-appeal/;
Melissa Quinn, and Robert Legare, Supreme Court rejects Peter Navarro's latest bid for release from prison
during appeal, CBS News, April 29, 2024, at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-peter-navarro-re-
jects-prison-release-appeal/ (Amit Mehta, an Obama judge) came to his fellow insurrectionists’ rescue. Trump
appointee Gregory Katsas wrote a dissent at the appellate level. Trump Judges Walker and Rao of the District
of Columbia Circuit tried to shelter Trump’s tax returns from statutorily authorized congressional discovery,
Trump v. Mazars U.S.A., LLP, No. 19-5142 (D.C. Cir. Nov. 13, 2019) (dissent from pet. for hearing en banc).
No one else even considered these aberrations.
The Trump judges appear to be part of a larger criminal conspiracy, hatched in the bowels of the Federalist
Society, to rewrite the law under the fraudulent guise of interpreting it. In Loper Bright Ent. v. Raimondo, No.

20
 3. Dobbs: If This Isn’t a Federal Felony, What Is???

As a retiree without progeny, Petitioner doesn’t claim a pressing interest in whether and

when women can have abortions. But what matters is the Constitution, and we have a duty

as citizens to insist that our black-robed servants stay within their lanes. We can do it with

ballots and if need be, we have done it with bullets. Declaration of Independence para. 2

(U.S. 1776). But we’d much prefer that judges not rewrite our Constitution, so that we are

not forced to resort to convoluted or even violent actions to defend our Republic.

The Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: “The enumeration in

the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained

by the people.” U.S. Const. amend. IX. By its terms, it is a mandatory canon of construction

equating protection for enumerated and unenumerated rights. In his introduction of the pre-

cursor to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments in the House of Representatives, principal author

James Madison explained that it was intended to evade application of the maxim, expressio

unius est exclusio alterius.20

22–451. 603 U. S. ___ (2024), we are advised that “A divided panel of the D. C. Circuit affirmed. See 45 F.
4th 359 (2022).” Id., slip op. at 5. And of course, no one would ever guess who the dissenter was (Trump Judge
Walker). Trump calls them “my judges” for a reason.
20
On June 8, 1789, Madison proposed twelve amendments to the Constitution, comprising the foundation for
our modern Bill of Rights. However, by his own admission, he deliberately avoided attempting to enumerate
rights “retained by the people,” under the rationale "that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of
power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by
implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the
General Government, and were consequently insecure." 1 Annals of Congress 456 (1789) (statement of Rep.
Madison). Madison’s draft read as follows:
The exceptions here or elsewhere in the constitution, made in favor of particular rights, shall not be so
construed as to diminish the just importance of other rights retained by the people; or as to enlarge the
powers delegated by the constitution; but either as actual limitations of such powers, or as inserted merely
for greater caution.
Id. at 452 (statement of Rep. Madison). Madison was not operating in a vacuum; the seventeenth resolution
proposed in the Virginia Ratifying Convention (June 26, 1788) was substantially identical. Virginia’s Ratifi-
cation, reprinted at U.S. Constitution.net (Apr 23, 2024), https://www.usconstitution.net/rat_va-html/

21
 The Framers didn’t debate our present-day Ninth and Tenth Amendments vigorously because it simply was
not necessary. The structure of the Constitution, of which the Amendments were an integral part, served as a
comprehensive protection against despotism.
“[W]hat [the Framers’ generation] understood when they ratified this Constitution was that they were af-
firming the rights of Englishmen,” Constitutional Relevance of Foreign Court Decisions, C-SPAN (television
broadcast Jan. 13, 2005) (remarks of Antonin Scalia), and the structure of the Constitution ensured it. While
the Federalists and Anti-Federalists didn’t agree on much, they did agree on the basic premise that the American
people were the sovereigns, holding this status as tenants-in-common. Both the individual states and the federal
government were their authorized agents, and they only suffered those encroachments on their rights absolutely
required to protect the remainder of their portfolio of rights. The Constitution (and its predecessor) was a treaty
between co-sovereigns, creating a suzerain subject to their ultimate control. One incisive exposition of this
understanding was that of Professor (Justice) Story:
The next amendment is: "The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to
deny, or disparage others retained by the people." This clause was manifestly introduced to prevent any
perverse, or ingenious misapplication of the well known maxim, that an affirmation in particular cases
implies a negation in all others; and e converso, that a negation in particular cases implies, an affirmation
in all others. The maxim, rightly understood, is perfectly sound and safe; but it has often been strangely
forced from its natural meaning into the support of the most dangerous political heresies. The amendment
was undoubtedly suggested by the reasoning of the Federalist on the subject of a general bill of rights.
3 Story, Commentaries at § 1898 (citing The Federalist, Nos. 83 and 84, 1 Lloyd's Debates, 433, 437, 1 Tucker's
Blackstone Commentaries App. 307, 308, and internal citations to his own work).
The concept of agency distills these provisions to essentials. In the Framers’ original design (the Civil War
Amendments admittedly upset this applecart), the powers “delegated by the proposed constitution to the federal
government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indef-
inite.” The Federalist No. 45, 296 (Madison). The States remained as self-governing nations, e.g., N.H. Const.
part 1, art. 7, and the scope of rights reserved by the people therein was none of the federal government’s damn
business. U.S. Const. amend. X. Federalist Nos. 83-85 addressed these objections; the Preamble to the Bill of
Rights drove the point home: “The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting
the Constitution expressed a desire in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further
declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added.” Bill of Rights, Preamble (U.S. 1789). As it pertains to
this case, Madison’s observations in Federalist No. 85 are of import:
The additional securities to republican government, to liberty and to property, to be derived from the
adoption of the plan under consideration, consist chiefly in the restraints which the preservation of the
union will impose on local factions and insurrections, and on the ambition of powerful individuals in
single states, who might acquire credit and influence enough, from leaders and favorites, to become the
despots of the people; in the diminution of the opportunities to foreign intrigue…
The Federalist No. 85, 482 (Madison). Citing Magna Carta [1215] and The Bill of Rights, 1 Will. & Mar. Sess.
2. c. 2 [1869], Madison avers that “bills of rights are in their origin, stipulations between kings and their sub-
jects, abridgments of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservations of rights not surrendered to the prince.”
Federalist No. 84, 477. He then drew a contrast, observing that “the people surrender nothing, and as they
retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations.” Id. (emphasis added). As former Judge Mi-
chael McConnell of the Tenth Circuit explained,
“the essence of the social contract is that we relinquish certain of our natural rights—most fundamentally,
the right to be a judge in our own case and to do violence—use violence against others, and we receive
in return more effectual protection for certain of our rights, plus the enjoyment of certain positive rights:
that is, rights that are created by the creation of political society. Civil rights are the rights we enjoy after
entering the state of civil society....”
Michael W. McConnell, Natural Rights, Enumerated Rights, and the Ninth Amendment, Sumner Canary Lec-
ture (Case Western U., Oct. 28, 2008), at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLANRrZPm-k (transcribed by
author, quote at ~30 minutes; last visited Jun. 26, 2024).

22
 As the history of the Ninth Amendment was expounded upon by Justice Goldberg in

detail in his Griswold (v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)) concurrence, id. at 488-94, the

Justice Alito who cited “Henry de Bracton's 13th-century treatise” De Legibus, Dobbs, 142

S.Ct. at 2250, was on fair notice of the etymology of the Ninth Amendment he was actually

charged with interpreting. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that “[no State

shall] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” U.S.

Const. amend. XIV, § 1. A woman’s right to determine if, when, and how many children she

will bear has already been identified as a liberty interest. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973),21

and Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment protects ALL life, liberty, or property interests

from State interference, as opposed to only those rights "deeply rooted in [our] history and

tradition." Dobbs, 142 S.Ct. at 2235.22

21
“This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and
restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's
reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to termi-
nate her pregnancy.” Roe, 410 U.S. at 153.
22
“Footnote Four” (United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152 & fn. 4 (1938) (citations omit-
ted)), is a bastard child of the “Living Constitution,” without a discernible foundation in law or logic. Judges
tend to eschew dramatic changes to avoid the appearance of writing law from the bench, and in this bacchanal
of Burkean minimalism, see Cass R. Sunstein, Burkean Minimalism, 105 Mich. L. Rev. 353 (2006), end up
writing law from the bench.
In its modern iteration, the Footnote Four approach to rights jurisprudence reflects this reticence, but at the
price of relegating the Ninth Amendment to the dust-bin of history—invoking the ethereal concept of substan-
tive due process to specially protect only rights which judges deem as being “deeply rooted in this Nation's
history and tradition,” e.g., Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 503 (1977) (plurality opinion), or somehow
"implicit in the concept of ordered liberty." Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325 (1937). Courts require a
"careful description" of the asserted “fundamental” liberty interest, Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, 302 (1993)—
an engraved invitation to an orgy of judicial discretion. In turn, it has the noxious effect of elevating some
rights to the exalted status of ‘fundamental’ while disparaging and denying others, thereby doing violence to
the plain meaning of the Ninth Amendment. Randy Barnett, Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption
of Liberty 254 (2004). It creates no principled rule of decision, as the outcome of any given dispute is more a
function of the judge’s personal predilections than anything else. It describes the law as the judge wants it to
be, but not why it is as it should be.

23
 As the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments only protect the life interests of “persons,” and

as a matter of law, a fetus is not a “person,”23 the Constitution does not protect fetal life. In

short, there is no rational way to get from the Ninth Amendment to Dobbs.

“Although adherence to precedent is not rigidly required in constitutional cases, any de-

parture from the doctrine of stare decisis demands special justification,” Arizona v. Rumsey,

467 US 203, 212 (1984) (citations omitted), and it is impossible to discern the articulation

of any reason for the Court’s departure from stare decisis, other than “We hates abortion,

My Preciousss. We hates it forever! Gollum! Gollum!”24

23
As the Roe Court observed, “no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of
the Fourteenth Amendment.” Roe, 410 U.S. at 157. Moreover, it is a term of legal art, borrowed from the
common law; during debate at the Virginia Ratification Convention, Madison explained to his colleagues that
whenever "a technical word is used [in the Constitution], all the incidents belonging to it necessarily attended
it." 3 J. Elliot, Debates on the Federal Constitution 531 (1836). This axiom was accepted by Judge Pendleton,
Chief Justice Marshall, and Edmund Randolph, Id. at 546, 558-59, 573, and Marshall later applied it in United
States v. Wilson, 32 U.S. 150, 160 (1833).
24
Observing that a respect for precedent is indispensable, Justice O’Connor explained that
when this Court reexamines a prior holding, its judgment is customarily informed by a series of prudential
and pragmatic considerations designed to test the consistency of overruling a prior decision with the ideal
of the rule of law, and to gauge the respective costs of reaffirming and overruling a prior case. Thus, for
example, we may ask whether the rule has proven to be intolerable simply in defying practical workabil-
ity, whether the rule is subject to a kind of reliance that would lend a special hardship to the consequences
of overruling and add inequity to the cost of repudiation, whether related principles of law have so far
developed as to have left the old rule no more than a remnant of abandoned doctrine; or whether facts
have so changed, or come to be seen so differently, as to have robbed the old rule of significant application
or justification.
Planned Parenthood of S.E. Pa. v. Casey 505 U.S. 833, 854-55 (1992) (citations omitted).
First, Pope Samuel of Alito avers that Roe was “egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Con-
stitution.” Dobbs, 142 S.Ct. at 2237. Given that under James Madison’s Bill of Rights, rights were retained by
the individual unless expressly ceded in the constitutional text, there is no evidence of an impending collision.
Compare this with Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), where Justice Taney’s exegesis of the Constitution
precipitated the correct answer, but the answer itself was morally repugnant. The constitutional remedy was
to fix the damn Constitution, which we did shortly thereafter.
Petitioner takes no position with respect to the morality of abortion, nor should he here. As a Scalian
originalist, I fracture the Roman axiom: “COTUS locuta est, causa finita est.” Again drawing inspiration from
the Court’s most petulant toddler, judges must have the courage and modesty to persist when the Constitution
“produces results that go against [their] policy preferences.” Michigan v. Bryant, 562 U.S. 344, 394-95 (2011)
(Scalia, J., dissenting). The Constitution does not deprive the woman of that right, and that is the end of the
discussion. For now. If the public decides to change the law, an amendment can be enacted.
Second, Pope Samuel complains that “Without any grounding in the constitutional text, history, or precedent,
Roe imposed on the entire country a detailed set of rules for pregnancy.” Dobbs, 142 S.Ct. at 2237. On the one

24
hand, point taken. But on the other, one is left to wonder where in the “constitutional text, history, or precedent”
that Pope John of Roberts magically discovered after 235 years that the Framers made the President our King.
Cf., Trump v. United States, No. 23-939 (U.S. 2024). The constitutional “fix,” if there even needs to be one, is
to dismantle the trimester system, but as 93% of abortions are performed in the first trimester and 99% are
done by the twentieth week (basically half-way), Jeff Diamant, et al., What the data says about abortion in the
U.S., Pew Research, Mar. 25, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/25/what-the-data-says-
about-abortion-in-the-us/, there was no indication that the system was so broke that the Court needed to fix it.
Third, Pope Samuel asserts that the existing regime was somehow unworkable. Dobbs, 142 S.Ct. at 2238.
As a rule, you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater; if we assume, arguendo, that “[c]ontinued adherence
to Casey's unworkable ‘undue burden’ test would undermine, not advance, the ‘evenhanded, predictable, and
consistent development of legal principles,’" id., then we scrap Casey, and let the woman who has to carry the
freight make the call, as the Framers intended.
Fourth, Pope Samuel avers “that traditional reliance interests were not implicated because getting an abortion
is generally "unplanned activity," and "reproductive planning could take virtually immediate account of any
sudden restoration of state authority to ban abortions.” Dobbs, 142 S.Ct. at 2239 (quoting Casey). Explain
that one to the woman who had a stroke from taking birth control pills, or those who fall under a fairly
long and relatively common list of contraindications—including being over 35, like every woman on the
planet. Frances E. Casey, MD, Oral Contraceptives, Merck Manual (Revised Jul 2023), https://www.merck-
manuals.com/professional/gynecology-and-obstetrics/family-planning/oral-contraceptives.
To even state the case is to refute it. Casey was wrong, and if Casey needs fixing, it does.
Fifth, one is hard-pressed to discern, as Pope Samuel does, how “Roe and Casey have led to the distortion
of many important but unrelated legal doctrines.” Dobbs, 142 S.Ct. at 2238. Even if we agree, arguendo, that
Apodaca (blessing a non-unanimous jury verdict) “is egregiously wrong, it has significant negative conse-
quences, and overruling it would not unduly upset reliance interests,” Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. 83, 140 S.
Ct. 1390, 1420 (2020) (Kavanaugh, J. concurring), it is impossible to conclude that a decision that was objec-
tively correct, has few identifiable negative consequences, and unreasonably upsets reliance interests.
Sixth, in ascertaining whether to abandon stare decisis, the Court adopts a sort of legal Hippocratic oath, in
the sense that it should do no harm. Specifically, Justice O’Connor writes that it must pragmatically “gauge
the respective costs of reaffirming and overruling a prior case.” Planned Parenthood, 505 U.S. at 854. And
by any objective measure, the cost to society of overturning Roe was far too high.
Roe fit comfortably within a long line of precedent declaring that the State did not have squatters’ rights
over our bodies. "No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded," than "the right of every individual
to the possession and control of his own person." Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891);
see, e.g., Cruzan v. Director, Mo. Dept. of Health, 497 U.S. 261, 269 (1990) (same), Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S.
753, 766-767 (1985) (forced surgery); Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952) (forced stomach pumping);
Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210 (1990) (forced administration of antipsychotic drugs), Skinner v. Okla-
homa, 316 U.S. 535 (1942) (forced sterilization) It also fit comfortably within the framework of the Court's
prior decisions involving relationships, e.g., Griswold, supra, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), Ober-
gefell, supra, and Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972), the holdings of which are "not a series of isolated
points," but mark a "rational continuum." Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 543 (Harlan, J., dissenting), and for-
bidding arbitrary impositions and restraints, e.g., Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U.S. 578 (1897), Pierce v. Society
of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), Nebbia v. New York, 291 U.S. 502 (1934); Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners,
353 U. S. 232 (1957).
As the King of Bribes solemnly observes, the meat cleaver the Court applies to Roe also endangers an array
of uncontroversial precedents. “[W]e should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents,
including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” Dobbs, 142 S.Ct. at 2301 (Thomas, J., concurring). And of
course, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), criminalizing interracial marriages. Remarkably, those statutes
were still on the books five years ago, Laura Vozzella, Virginia looks at scrapping defunct, racist laws still on
the books, Wash. Post, Dec. 5, 2019, and in theory, could be reanimated at any time. After all, as his brother
Kavanaugh observes, “this Court has held that the Constitution protects unenumerated rights that are deeply
rooted in this Nation's history and tradition, and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” Dobbs, 142 S.Ct.

25
 And for purposes of criminal law, this fact is dispositive. There is a right way to amend

the Constitution and a wrong one, and expressly appointing Justices to rewrite it under the

fraudulent guise of “interpreting it” is the wrong one. Heiner v. Donnan, supra. But this is

precisely what Mr. Trump publicly confessed to having done.25 As this was done through

the efforts of Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, in identifying lawyers who would over-

turn Roe v. Wade by naked judicial fiat, in open derogation of their oaths,26 we have a

at 2304 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). After all, if abortion isn’t there, then a fortiori, the right to marry outside
your race most certainly isn’t.
And as widely foreseen, the interment of Roe led to a predictable human train-wreck. E.g., Solcyré Burga,
How a 10-Year-Old Rape Victim Who Traveled for an Abortion Became Part of a Political Firestorm, Time,
Jul. 15, 2022 (quite absurdly, Ohio law made no exception for the rape of a minor child); Elizabeth Cohen and
John Bonifield, Texas woman almost dies because she couldn’t get an abortion, CNN, Jun. 20, 2023,
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/16/health/abortion-texas-sepsis/index.html, Paradoxically, despite near-total
bans in 14 states, “the number and rate of abortions in 2023 hit their highest point in over a decade” … an 11%
increase from 2020. Lauren Mascarenhas, The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade 2 years ago. Here’s
what’s happened since, CNN, Jun. 22, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/22/us/roe-v-wade-overturned-2-
years/index.html. Patients and providers have struggled to navigate a patchwork of sometimes hastily imple-
mented abortion policies that include mandatory waiting periods, limits on Medicaid coverage for abortion,
and vague language around medical emergency exceptions to abortion bans in states. Id. Lauren Mascarenhas,
et al., A Texas woman is suing the prosecutors who charged her with murder after her self-induced abortion,
CNN, Apr. 3, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/01/us/texas-abortion-lawsuit-lizelle-gonzalez/index.html
(abortion done before Roe was interred). Over 35,000 Texas women had to flee the state in 2023, Molly Cook
Escobar, et al., 171,000 Traveled for Abortions Last Year. See Where They Went., N.Y. Times, June 13, 2024,
and Texas even allows private citizens to file a civil lawsuit against anyone who knowingly "aids or abets" an
abortion. Emma Bowman, As states ban abortion, the Texas bounty law offers a way to survive legal challenges,
NPR.org, Jul. 11, 2022, at https://www.npr.org/2022/07/11/1107741175/texas-abortion-bounty-law. They also
tried banning the abortifacient mifepristone, in an effort to force themselves on the rest of the country. FDA v.
Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, 602 U.S. 367 (2024) (dismissed on standing grounds only).
While substantive due process jurisprudence is "demonstrably erroneous,” it is because Footnote Four has
no foundation in law. The constitutional cure for a judge-made rule where judges have illicitly arrogated almost
limitless discretion to themselves is to inter the rule; this is almost 100 years overdue.
25
“Former President Donald Trump, who nominated three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn
Roe v. Wade, gave himself credit for the outcome,” stating that ‘the decision in the abortion case and others
recently announced by the court ‘were only made possible because I delivered everything as promised.’” Lau-
ren Feiner and Dan Mangan, Trump takes credit for end of Roe v. Wade after his 3 Supreme Court justice picks
vote to void abortion rights, CNBC, Jun. 24 2024, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/24/roe-v-wade-decision-
trump-takes-credit-for-supreme-court-abortion-ruling.html
26
“As Edward Whelan, a prominent conservative legal activist and blogger, wrote recently, ‘No one has been
more dedicated to the enterprise of building a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade than the Federalist
Society’s Leonard Leo.’” Jeffrey Toobin, The Conservative Pipeline to the Supreme Court, New Yorker Mag-
azine, Apr. 10, 2017. While Leo’s activities may be constitutionally protected advocacy, the Justices’ actions
are facially felonious.

26
criminal conspiracy. That women would die because of said conspiracy was as predictable

as the sunrise. And we even have a body: Amber Thurman.27 As a federal judge, you ought

to be able to sing the pattern jury instructions for 18 U.S.C. § 241.

4. Trump v. Anderson: Constitutions are Highly Overrated

Citing legislative history that should have been dispositive, Anderson v. Griswold, 543

P.3d 283, 322 (Colo. 2023) (quoting the Congressional Globe), the Colorado Supreme Court

held that Donald Trump “was disqualified from holding the office of President under Section

Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” Id. The controlling

question was whether the Amendment is self-executing; the answer was provided by Chief

Justice Marshall, in the first case we all studied in law school:

The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means,

or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when
the legislature shall please to alter it.
If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the consti-
tution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts,
on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 177 (1803).28

There is no support in precedent or logic for the proposition that a constitutional provision

must be activated by formal legislation to become effective. E.g., United States v. Stanley

(Civil Rights Cases), 109 U.S. 3, 20 (1883) (“the Thirteenth amendment, as well as the Four-

teenth, is undoubtedly self-executing without any ancillary legislation”), City of Boerne v.

Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 524 (1997) (Fourteenth); South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301,

27
Kavitha Surana, Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This
Mother’s Death Was Preventable, ProPublica, Sept. 16, 2024, https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-abor-
tion-ban-amber-thurman-death.
28
Technically, the bulk of Marbury v. Madison is obiter dictum, which became super-precedent by sheer force
of argument.

27
325 (1966) (Fifteenth); see, Jacobs v. United States, 290 U.S. 13, 16 (1933) (Fifth Amdt.

takings clause is an implied waiver of sovereign immunity); cf., Barron ex rel. Tiernan v.

Mayor of Baltimore, 32 U.S. 243 (1833) (Bill of Rights originally not enforceable as against

the States—by design).

“There are right and wrong answers to legal questions," Clarence Thomas, Judging, 45

U. Kan. L. Rev. 1, 5 (1996), and clear rules of the road. “The object of construction, applied

to a constitution, is to give effect to the intent of its framers … and when the text of a con-

stitutional provision is not ambiguous, the courts … are not at liberty to search for its mean-

ing beyond the instrument.” Lake County v. Rollins, 130 U.S. 662, 670 (1889). Legislators

are presumed to have said what they meant and meant what they said, Connecticut Nat’l.

Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253-54 (1992) (Thomas, J; collecting 200 years’ worth of

cases), and “[a]bsent a clearly expressed legislative intention to the contrary, that language

must ordinarily be regarded as conclusive." Consumer Product Safety Commission v. GTE

Sylvania, Inc., 447 U.S. 102, 109 (1980).29 The first step in interpretation of any provision

29
Legislative history can be valuable for resolution of ambiguities in technical areas of the law, see, Train v.
Colorado Public Interest Research Group, Inc., 426 U.S. 1 (1976), but it is better used to confirm drafter intent.
E.g., United States v. Wiltberger, 18 U.S. 76, 95-96 (1820) (per Marshall, C. J.) ("Where there is no ambiguity
in the words, there is no room for construction. The case must be a strong one indeed, which would justify a
court in departing from the plain meaning of words . . . in search of an intention which the words themselves
did not suggest"); Milner v. Dep’t of the Navy, 562 U.S. 562, 572 (2011) (“Those of us who make use of
legislative history believe that clear evidence of congressional intent may illuminate ambiguous text. We will
not take the opposite tack of allowing ambiguous legislative history to muddy clear statutory language.”). See
generally, Statutory Interpretation: Theories, Tools, and Trends, Cong. Research Service, Mar. 10, 2023, at
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45153.
Residual ambiguities are to be resolved by resort to “the saving grace of common sense." Bell v. United
States, 349 U.S. 81, 83 (1955). The office of a judge is “to make such construction [of a law] as shall suppress
the mischief, advance the remedy, and to suppress subtle invention and evasions for continuance of the mischief
... according to the true intent of the makers of the act." Heydon's Case [1584] 76 Eng. Rep. 637 (Exch.). Pacta
sunt servanda. As the Constitution would not precipitate an absurd and unjust result where any plausible
alternative is available, see e.g., United States v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 310 U.S. 534, 542-43 (1940);
Haggar Co. v. Helvering, 308 U.S. 389, 394 (1940), we expect judicial decisions to make sense. As a final
check, the competent judge is obliged to answer the question famously posited by Scalia: "Would the States
conceivably have entered into the Union if the Constitution itself contained the Court’s holding?" Arizona v.

28
“is to determine whether the language at issue has a plain and unambiguous meaning with

regard to the particular dispute in the case." Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U.S. 337, 340

(1997) (Thomas, J.).

The Court could have followed Wiltberger, 18 U.S. at 95-96 ("Where there is no ambi-

guity in the words, there is no room for construction”), and called it a day. They could have

simply quoted “The Notorious D.E.I.,” Clarence Thomas. Germain, 503 U.S. at 253-54. Or

they could have followed their own precedent. Milner, 562 U.S. at 572. According to the

Senator who introduced the Fourteenth Amendment to that body, Section Five of the Four-

teenth Amendment was remedial in scope, “enabl[ing] Congress, in case the State shall enact

laws in conflict with the principles of the amendment, to correct that legislation by a formal

congressional enactment.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2768 (1868) (statement of

Sen. Jacob M. Howard (R-MI)). In the majority opinion, they quoted from the paragraph

quoted above and as such, were on notice as to the Amendment framers’ intent.30 Trump v.

Anderson, No. 23–719, 601 U.S. ___ (2024), slip op. at 5. And as this incident is unprece-

dented and unlikely to be repeated, the Court could have easily denied cert.

United States, No. 11-182, Jun. 25, 2012 (Scalia, J., bench statement at 6). Even at a trial court level, stare
decisis is more of a corset than a straitjacket.
30
In concluding that the Amendment covered the President, The Anderson majority wrote:
“Senator Reverdy Johnson worried that the final version of Section Three did not include the office of the
Presidency. He stated, “[T]his amendment does not go far enough” because past rebels “may be elected
President or Vice President of the United States.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 2899 (1866). So, he
asked, “why did you omit to exclude them? I do not understand them to be excluded from the privilege
of holding the two highest offices in the gift of the nation.” Id. Senator Lot Morrill fielded this objection.
He replied, “Let me call the Senator’s attention to the words ‘or hold any office, civil or military, under
the United States.’” Id. This answer satisfied Senator Johnson, who stated, “Perhaps I am wrong as to the
exclusion from the Presidency; no doubt I am; but I was misled by noticing the specific exclusion in the
case of Senators and Representatives.” Id. This colloquy further supports the view that the drafters of this
Amendment intended the phrase “any office” to be broadly inclusive, and certainly to include the Presi-
dency.”
Anderson v. Griswold, 543 P.3d 283, 322 (Colo. 2023). Another potential ambiguity resolved.

29
 By that pellucid metric, even when viewed in isolation, Trump v. Anderson, 601 U.S. 100

(2024), is not law and scarcely even pretends to be. But in context, it is infinitely worse.

In one Circuit, the Chief Judge observed that a “legal ruling done with improper motive can

constitute misconduct.” In re Charge of Judicial Misconduct, No. 2006-10-372-40 (10th Cir.

Judicial Council Jan. 4, 2007) at 2. It can also constitute a federal felony, and there is no

known statutory exception immunizing the official conduct of federal judges.

And it’s not like the Justices don’t understand their job description. Writing for the Court,

Chief Justice Roberts admitted that “Members of this Court are vested with the authority to

interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judg-

ments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation's elected leaders, who can be thrown out

of office if the people disagree with them.” Nat. Fedn. of Indep. Business v. Sebelius, 567

U.S. 519, 132 S.Ct. 2566, 2579 (2012). No judge "can war against the Constitution without

violating his undertaking to support it," Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 18 (1958), and the

TRUMP Court is engaged in a full-throated insurgency.31 In knowingly acting in a manner

intended to assist a thrice-indicted (and now, convicted) criminal defendant “in order to hin-

der or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment,” 18 U.S.C. § 3, the Justices in the ma-

jority have become accessories after-the-fact in his [alleged] crimes.

31
“Lawless judicial conduct— the administration, in disregard of the law, of a personal brand of justice
in which the judge becomes a law unto himself—is as threatening to the concept of government under law as
is the loss of judicial independence.” In re Ross, 428 A.2d 858, 861 (Me. 1981) (emphasis added).
While Justice Scalia enjoyed being our Ruler so much that he was happy to “work for free,” “I’ve been
working for free, which probably means I’m too stupid to be on the Supreme Court.” Scalia on the Record,
Both Online and Off (CBS television broadcast Apr. 27, 2008) (http://perma.cc/A64CQNBB), when the Court’s
most petulant toddler didn’t get his way, he threw tantrums any three-year-old would be proud of. And in his
anger, he inadvertently uttered the truth: that our Supreme Court is no longer a court, but an unelected super-
legislature, no longer constrained by even the Constitution itself. “This practice of constitutional revision ...
has rob[bed] the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and
won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.” Obergefell v. Hodges, No. 14-556, 576
U.S. __ (2015) (Scalia, J., dissenting; slip op. at 2).

30
 5. “WE HAVE A KING!” Declaring Trump v. United States

The illegitimacy of the Court's departures from the Constitution is underscored

by the fact that no Justice has ever attempted a justification of the practice. At
most, opinions have offered, as if it solved something, the observation that the
Court has never felt its power confined to the intended meaning of the Constitu-
tion. True enough, but a long habit of abuse of authority does not make the
abuse legitimate. That is particularly so when the representative branches of
government have no effective way of resisting the Court's depredations.
Viewing the carnage created by the Court, George Will referred to the Justices
as "our robed masters." When the VMI decision came down, my wife said the
Justices were behaving like a "band of outlaws." Neither of those appellations
is in the least bit extreme. The Justices are our masters in a way that no Presi-
dent, Congressman, governor, or other elected official is. They order our lives
and we have no recourse, no means of resisting, no means of altering their
ukases. They are indeed robed masters. But "band of outlaws"? An outlaw is a
person who coerces others without warrant in law. That is precisely what a
majority of the present Supreme Court does. That is, given the opportunity, what
the Supreme Court has always done.
~Judge Robert Bork32

Clarence Thomas’ soliloquy in Gamble v. United States, 587 U.S. 678, 710-26 (2019)

(Thomas, J., concurring) (citation omitted), is both a master class in judicature and a damn-

ing criminal confession. Based on the Conspiring Justices’33 publicly expressed judicial

32
Robert H. Bork, Our Judicial Oligarchy, 67 First Things 21, 24 (Nov. 1996) (emphasis added). As Thomas
Jefferson intoned, “The constitution ... is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may
twist, and shape into any form they please.” Thomas Jefferson, Letter (to Spencer Roane), Sept. 6, 1819 at 1.
There is no contrary authority, and concurrences would fill a Brandeis brief..
33
The “Conspiring Justices” are Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A.
Alito, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

31
philosophy, the public had a right to expect that they would look to the text of the Constitu-

tion, its legislative history, and its original public meaning to answer the question of whether

a President enjoyed absolute immunity from criminal prosecution … and no farther.

The King can do no wrong, in a land without a king. To even state the Conspiring Justices’

declaration in Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), is to refute it. It cannot be found

in the plain text of the Constitution, its penumbrae, or even its emanations. Antonin G. Scalia,

Historical Anomalies in Administrative Law, Y.B. Supreme Ct. Hist. Soc’y. 103 (1985). Pres-

idential immunity has no “grounding in constitutional text, history, or precedent,” Dobbs v.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215, 280 (2022), or the canons of common

sense. To meet the requirements of Article III, a judicial opinion must reason from the Con-

stitution we have, as opposed to the one the judges prefer. See e.g., Federalist #78. Justice

Breyer elaborates:

Judges do not simply announce a legal conclusion. They reason their way to that conclu-
sion in an opinion written for all to see. The obligation to provide legally defensible
reasoning in a publicly accessible format prevents a judge from escaping accountability.
Indeed, a good judicial opinion is transparent and informative. It shows that the decision
is principled and reasoned. The strength of this reasoning matters.

Stephen Breyer, Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View 83 (2010) (emphasis added).

The Breyer standard is not just a statement of best practices, but what we citizens have a con-

stitutional right to demand.

a. The Framers Clearly Did Not Intend to Grant Criminal Immunity to the President.

On its face, the Constitution does not contain an express grant of civil or criminal im-

munity to a President. And the notion was considered: On Sept. 4, 1787, Madison raised the

issue of Presidential immunity in the Philadelphia Convention, “suggest[ing] also the neces-

sity of considering what privileges ought to be allowed to the Executive.” 2 Records of the

32
Federal Convention of 1787, 503 (M. Farrand, ed.) (1911). The Framers granted limited and

targeted immunity to “Senators and Representatives … [who] shall in all Cases, except Trea-

son, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at

the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for

any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.” U.S.

Const. art. I, § 6, cl. 2. But Madison’s proposal for the grant of any kind of privilege for the

Executive was summarily dismissed.34

From the evidence of the text, legislative history and the Framers’ public statements, it

can safely be concluded that they did not grant any form of immunity for criminal acts to the

President, and this was by design.35 Influential commentators agreed. E.g., 2 St. George

34
The Framers did not maintain a formal legislative history of the Convention; this appears to be by design.
Madison had intended to publish his notes in the 1790s, but they were not all contemporary; they were pub-
lished after his death. Library of Congress, James Madison and the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787
(web article; undated) https://www.loc.gov/collections/james-madison-papers/articles-and-essays/james-mad-
ison-and-the-federal-constitutional-convention-of-1787/. All we know for certain is that Madison said that he
raised the issue and by his silence, we are forced to infer that it was never given serious consideration.
35
E.g., James Wilson told the Pennsylvania ratifying convention that the president was “far from being above
the laws,” and “not a single privilege [was] annexed to his character.” 2 Elliot’s Debates 480. Contrasting the
President to the King, Alexander Hamilton averred that “The President of the United States would be liable to
be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed
from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.” The
Federalist No. 69, 396-97 (Hamilton). Some years later, Charles Pinckney confirmed that “[n]o privilege of
this kind was intended for your Executive, nor any except that which I have mentioned for your Legislature.”
Sen. Charles Pinckney (D/R-SC), Speech (in the United States Senate), Mar. 5, 1800, 3 Farrand 384-85. Noting
“no subject had been more abused than privilege,” he added that the Framers “set the example in merely lim-
iting privilege to what was necessary, and no more.” Id. There is no contrary authority.’
Whereas the Framers’ public views carry the most probative value, it was generally understood that the
president’s accountability to prosecution would distinguish American leaders from European monarchs. In a
September 1787 essay, Tench Coxe emphasized that the president could be “proceeded against like any other
man in the ordinary course of law.” An American Citizen I, Indep. Gazetteer (Philadelphia, Pa.) (Sept. 26,
1787), reprinted in 2 Documentary History of Ratification (“DHR”) 138, 141. As “Americanus,” a supporter
of the Constitution from New Jersey, observed, the British king was “above the reach of all Courts of law,” but
this “prerogative[]” was not “vested in the President.” Americanus II, N.Y. Daily Advertiser (Nov. 23, 1787),
reprinted in 19 DHR 287, 288-89. Patrick Henry found this to be a flaw asserting that “we may prescribe the
rules by which he shall rule his people, and interpose such checks as shall prevent him from infringing them,
but the President, in the field, at the head of his army, can prescribe the terms on which he shall reign,” 3 Elliot’s
Debates 59-60 (Patrick Henry) (noting in opposition to the president’s control over the army in the draft Con-
stitution that a president who committed a crime might try to use the army to avoid “being ignominiously tried
and punished”), presaging the concern Justice Sotomayor voiced in her dissent.

33
Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries 219 n.1. (1803); 3 Debates in the Several State Conven-

tions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (2d Elliot ed. 1836) 59-60 (Patrick Henry),

and the reason was self-evident: “Representative democracy ceases to exist the moment that

the public functionaries are by any means absolved from their responsibility to their constit-

uents.” 1 Tucker’s Blackstone 297 (editor's app’x.). But through some form of arcane sor-

cery beyond the skill of Merlin the Magician, the Conspiring Justices concluded that “the

nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal

prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.” Trump

v. United States, slip op. at 1. As Lord Justice Dennman wrote, "the mere statement and re-

statement of a doctrine cannot make it law, unless it can be traced to some competent au-

thority." O'Connell v. Regina [1844] 8 Eng. Rep. 1061, 1143 (Q.B.). But what makes Trump

v. United States so objectively bizarre is that the Justices changed their minds and more

critically, failed to explain why.

Senator William Maclay (Anti-Administration-PA) asked what would happen in the case of a murderous
president: “Suppose the President committed murder in the street. Impeach him? . . . But [suppose] . . . he runs
away. But I will put up another case. Suppose he continues his murders daily, and neither House is sitting to
impeach him.” William Maclay, The journal of William Maclay, United States Senator from Pennsylvania,
1789-1791, 163 (Chas. A. Beard ed., 1927) (1965). “Senator William Grayson of Virginia was adamant that
the ‘President was not above the law,’ arguing that presidents likely would be sued and that they might be
prosecuted for murder.” Saikrishna Prakash, Prosecuting and Punishing Our Presidents, 100 Tex. L. Rev.55,
74-5 (2021). Others underscored that the president could be “tried for his crimes,” see Publicola: An Address
to the Freemen of North Carolina, State Gazette of N.C. (Mar. 27, 1788), reprinted in 30 DHR Digital Edition
113, 116 (Kaminski et al. eds., 2009) and was “liable . . . to be indicted if the case should require it,” see A
Freeholder, Va. Indep. Chron. (Apr. 9, 1788), reprinted in 9 DHR 719, 723. The Federal Farmer was more
concerned that the President would use his office to get re-elected, “Federal Farmer,” The Character of the
Executive Office, Antifederalist No. 69, reprinted at https://www.history1700s.com/index.php/the-united-
states-constitution-reference/the-anti-federalist-papers/1178-antifederalist-no-69.html. On the privileges of
king and lords, Tucker states: “The fundamental principle of the American Constitutions and governments,
being the perfect equality of rights, there was no room to admit any thing therein, that should bear the most
distant resemblance to the subject of this chapter.” I2 St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries 219 n.1.
(1803). As Chief Justice Marshall put it, “the president is elevated from the mass of the people and, on the
expiration of the time for which he is elected, returns to the mass of the people again.” United States v. Burr,
25 F. Cas. 30, 34 (C.C.D. Va. 1807) (Marshall, C.J., riding circuit) (emphasis added). Therefore, “the first
magistrate of the Union may more properly be likened to the first magistrate of a state,” rather than to a “mon-
arch.” Id. Again, there is no contrary authority.

34
 b. The Originalist Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas

In a recent concurrence, Clarence Thomas offers a blanket confession: “We should re-

store our stare decisis jurisprudence to ensure that we exercise ‘mer[e] judgment,’ [as op-

posed to will], which can be achieved through adherence to the correct, original meaning of

the laws we are charged with applying. In my view, anything less invites arbitrariness into

judging.” Gamble v. United States, 587 U.S. 678, 139 S.Ct. 1960, 1981 (2019) (Thomas, J.,

concurring) (citation omitted). He further avers that “the Court's typical formulation of the

stare decisis standard does not comport with our judicial duty under Article III because it

elevates demonstrably erroneous decisions—meaning decisions outside the realm of per-

missible interpretation—over the text of the Constitution and other duly enacted federal

law.” Id. “[W]e are not entitled to interpret the Constitution to align it with our personal

sensibilities.” Id. at 1980. “By applying demonstrably erroneous precedent instead of the

relevant law's text…the Court exercises "force" and "will," two attributes the People did not

give it.” Id. at 1981 (citing Federalist #78). “It is always "tempting for judges to confuse our

own preferences with the requirements of the law.’" Id. (citation omitted). He continues:

A proper understanding of stare decisis in our constitutional structure requires a proper

understanding of the nature of the "judicial Power" vested in the federal courts. That
"Power" is—as Chief Justice Marshall put it—the power "to say what the law is" in the
context of a particular "case" or "controversy" before the court. Phrased differently, the
"judicial Power" "is fundamentally the power to decide cases in accordance with law."
It refers to the duty to exercise "judicial discretion" as distinct from "arbitrary discre-
tion."

Id. at 1982 (citations omitted).

“Judicial discretion is not the power to ‘alter’ the law; it is the duty to correctly ‘expound’

it.” Id. (citation omitted). As he observed, “there are right and wrong answers to legal ques-

tions," Id. at 1984 (citation omitted), and it is the task of the judge to ascertain and apply the

right ones, because judicial opinions are not the supreme Law of the Land. U.S. Const. art.

35
VI, cl. 2. And as a failed seminarian, Clarence Thomas, My Grandfather’s Son (HarperCol-

lins, 2007), Thomas may recall this pointed barb from Scripture: “If anyone, then, knows the

good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. Jas. 4:17.

Thomas provides the rule that this Court should follow when confronted by bloody jurid-

ical abortions like Dobbs, Trump v. Anderson, and Trump v. United States: “When faced with

a demonstrably erroneous precedent, my rule is simple: We should not follow it.” Gamble,

587 U.S. 678, 139 S.Ct. at 1984. “This view of stare decisis follows directly from the Con-

stitution's supremacy over other sources of law—including our own precedents … [as it]

necessarily limits ‘the power of a court to give legal effect to prior judicial decisions’ that

articulate demonstrably erroneous interpretations of the Constitution because those prior de-

cisions cannot take precedence over the Constitution itself.” Id. at 1984-85 (citations omit-

ted). The only difference between a tyrant and a judge is that the latter is tethered to the rule

of law.36

c. The Other Conspiring Justices’ Collective Concurrence.…

Unsurprisingly, the other Conspiring Justices left concurrences even Hansel and Gretel

could follow. Justice Kavanaugh recently admitted that the Constitution “does not grant the

nine unelected Members of this Court the unilateral authority to rewrite the Constitution to

36
In disciplining another out-of-control state judge, New York authorities observe:
Tyrants come in more varieties than Baskin-Robbins has flavors. The ultimate protection a free society
has against a tyrant, is a judicial system that acts as the last barrier to a tyrant’s will. Therefore, it is
immeasurably worse when the tyrant is the judge himself. ... Just as there is no small death, there is
no small tyranny.
Respondent [a judge] acted in tyrannical fashion. His will was the law, and to the degree that his law
conflicted with the actual one, he was above the law.
In re Mills (N.Y. Comm. On Judicial Conduct Dec. 4, 2004) (Felder, J., dissenting in severity of sanction only;
unpaginated), http://www.scjc.state.ny.us/Determinations/M/mills,_douglas.htm (last visited Apr. 8, 2011)
(emphasis added).

36
create new rights and liberties based on our own moral or policy views.” Dobbs, 142 S.Ct.

at 2306 (Kavanaugh, J. concurring). In a scholarly work predating her ascension to the

bench, Justice Barrett admits that “partisan politics are not a good reason for overturning

precedent. But neither are they a good reason for deciding a case of first impression.” Amy

C. Barrett, Precedent and Jurisprudential Disagreement, 91 Tex. L. Rev. 1711, 1729 (2012-

2013).37 In his confirmation hearing, Justice Alito warranted that “[I]t is the job of a judge,

the job of a Supreme Court Justice, to interpret the Constitution, not distort the Constitution,

not add to the Constitution or subtract from the Constitution.” Confirmation Hearing on the

Nomination of Samuel A. Alito, Jr. To Be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the

United States: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 109th Cong. 465 (2006) (state-

ment of Samuel A. Alito, Jr.). And perhaps more importantly, he observed that “The Consti-

tution does not always mean what we would like it to mean.” Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Let Judges

Be Judges (lecture) (Oct. 13, 2010) (transcript at https://perma.cc/L4MC-5STU). On the

bench, he quoted Scalia: "What I look for in the Constitution is precisely what I look for in

a statute: the original meaning of the text.” Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,

593 U.S. 522, 141 S.Ct. 1868, 1894 (2021) (Alito, J. concurring; citation omitted). In a Tenth

Circuit concurrence, Justice Gorsuch observed:

Ours is the job of interpreting the Constitution. And that document isn't some inkblot on
which litigants may project their hopes and dreams for a new and perfected tort law, but
a carefully drafted text judges are charged with applying according to its original
public meaning. If a party wishes to claim a constitutional right, it is incumbent on him

37
Barrett “tend[s] to agree with those who say that a [judge’s] duty is to the Constitution and that it is thus
more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks
clearly in conflict with it,” Barrett at 1728, which is implicit in originalist thought, which Barrett expounded
on at length in her confirmation hearing. When someone comes for his gunny-gun-guns, Defendant Alito
declares that when “the statutory text is clear … we must follow it.” Garland v. Cargill, 602 U. S. 406, 429
(2024) (Alito, J., concurring). To others perhaps less charitable, one need only “look at the Republican Party
platform” to “know his judicial philosophy.” Stephanie Mencimer, Conservatives Say They Want Another An-
tonin Scalia. They Really Want Another Sam Alito, Mother Jones (May/June 2016), http://www.moth-
erjones.com/politics/2016/06/samuel-alito-profile-antonin-scalia-supreme-court-appointment.

37
 to tell us where it lies, not to assume or stipulate with the other side that it must be in
there someplace.

Cordova v. City of Albuquerque, 816 F.3d 645, 661 (10th Cir. 2016) (Gorsuch, J, concurring)

(emphasis added). Finally, in an infamous dissent, when it served his purposes, Chief Justice

Roberts pontificated that

this Court is not a legislature … Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what
the law is, not what it should be. The people who ratified the Constitution authorized
courts to exercise "neither force nor will but merely judgment." The Federalist No. 78,
p. 465 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton) (capitalization altered). …

The majority's decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has
no basis in the Constitution or this Court's precedent. The majority expressly disclaims
judicial "caution" and omits even a pretense of humility, openly relying on its desire to
remake society according to its own "new insight" into the "nature of injustice." …

Understand well what this dissent is about: … whether, in our democratic republic, that
decision should rest with the people acting through their elected representatives, or with
five lawyers who happen to hold commissions authorizing them to resolve legal disputes
according to law. The Constitution leaves no doubt about the answer.

Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644, 135 S.Ct. 2584, 2811-12 (2015) (Roberts. C.J., dissent-

ing). Based on the Conspiring Justices’ publicly expressed judicial philosophy, the public

had every right to expect that they would look to the text of the Constitution, its legislative

history, and its original public meaning to answer the question of whether a President en-

joyed absolute immunity from criminal prosecution … and go no farther.

d. ….And Their Collective Criminal Confession

In declaring their curious ukase in Trump v. United States, the Conspiring Justices were

not writing from a blank slate. Everything they had said on the record beforehand would

have led the reasonable citizen to believe that they had all concluded that the notion that our

President enjoyed almost limitless immunity from criminal prosecution was fifty shades of

absurd.

38
 Prior to issuing the ruling in Trump v. United States, Justice Kavanaugh admitted that the

President did not enjoy criminal immunity. As he was an adjunct professor at Harvard who

worked for independent counsel Kenneth Starr and had written a scholarly piece on the sub-

ject, Brett M. Kavanaugh, The President and the Independent Counsel, 86 Geo. L.J. 2133

(1998), his was the most full-throated answer:

“No one has ever said, I do not think, that the president is immune from civil or criminal
process,” Kavanaugh said. “So immunity is the wrong term to even think about in this
process.” He added, “But immunity is not — not the correct word, and I do not think
anyone thinks of immunity. And why not? No one is above the law. And that is just
such a foundational principle of the Constitution and equal justice under law.” 38

Although examined less directly, when asked whether a President had criminal immunity,

all of the other Conspiring Justices agreed under oath that he did not.39 Ergo, at the time

38
Aaron Blake, What conservative justices said about immunity — before giving it to Trump, Wash. Post, Jul.
2, 2024 (hereinafter, “Blake”). And in a response to Senator Grassley (R-IA) regarding suspicion that he would
rule that the President enjoys broad immunity from criminal liability, he explained why:
No one is above the law in our constitutional system. Federalist 69, Hamilton makes clear all the ways
that the executive branch, as designed by the Framers of the Constitution, was different from the monar-
chy. Under our system of Government, the executive branch is subject to the law, subject to the court
system, and that is an important part of Federalist 69. It is an important part of the constitutional structure.
S. Hrg. 115-545, Pt. 1, Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of Hon. Brett Kavanaugh to be an Associate
Justice of the United States 119 (Sept. 4-7, 2018) (stmt. of Judge Kavanaugh). Similar statements from the
hearing are compiled in video form. Conover Kennard, Brett Kavanaugh In 2018 Disagrees With Brett Ka-
vanaugh of 2024, Crooks&Liars.com, Jul. 2, 2024, https://crooksandliars.com/cltv/2024/07/brett-kavanaugh-
2018-disagrees-brett (video only). His answers were consistent with a 2008 speech, where he averred that
no one is above the law in our system of government. I strongly agree with that principle. But it is not
ultimately a persuasive criticism of these suggestions. The point is not to put the President above the law
or to eliminate checks on the President, but simply to defer litigation and investigations until the President
is out of office.
Brett M. Kavanaugh, Separation of Powers During the Forty-Fourth Presidency and Beyond, 93 Minn. L. Rev.
1454 (2009) (adaptation of speech). But now, in retrospect, Sen. Hirono’s remarks appear oddly prescient:
[W]e are here to decide whether or not to rubber stamp Donald Trump’s choice of a pre-selected political
ideologue, nominated precisely because he believes a sitting President should be shielded from civil law-
suits, criminal investigation, and prosecution, no matter the facts. …
Donald Trump selected Brett Kavanaugh from this list for an even more specific reason. The President is
trying as hard as he can to protect himself from the independent, impartial, and dogged investigation of
his abuse of power, before the walls close in on him entirely.
Kavanaugh Hearing at 80-81 (stmt. of Sen. Hirono (D-HI).
39
“I believe that no one is above the law under our system, and that includes the President. The President is
fully bound by the law, the Constitution and statutes.” S. Hrg. 109–158, Confirmation Hearing on the

39
they were asked to consider the case, by all rights, they should have been predisposed to not

even grant certiorari review.

Of course, we expect our judges to change their minds in the face of a compelling argu-

ment. But in nearly twenty briefs submitted by Mr. Trump and card-carrying members of

his personality cult in support of his position, not one shred of historical evidence was pre-

sented that would constitute a substantial justification for the rational judge to change his or

her position.40 Moreover, many of the aforementioned amici offered irrelevant political

screeds, complaining of a “witch hunt”—ignoring the fact that political “witch hunts” tend

to find covens.41 Presidential criminal immunity exists nowhere in the plain text of the

Nomination of John G. Roberts, Jr. to be Chief Justice of the United States 152 (2005) (stmt. of Judge Roberts);
“No man is above the law. … No man.” S. Hrg. 115–208, Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of Hon.
Neil Gorsuch to be an Associate Justice of the United States 113 (2017) (stmt. of Judge Gorsuch); “Barrett said
three times that nobody was ‘above the law’ while responding to questions about the president” and Alito stated
that “no person in this country is above the law, and that includes the president and it includes the Supreme
Court.” Blake, What conservative justices said, supra. As Defendant Thomas has made a veritable career out
of being as silent and brutal as Quimbo, it is unsurprising that he had not weighed in emphatically.
40
“Half the truth is often a lie in effect,” Twing v. Schott, 338 P.2d 839, 841 (Wyo. 1959), and the closest that
any of the the amici ever came to presenting historical support was Ohio’s reference to Professsor (Justice)
Story’s famed Commentaries: “Early on, Justice Story commented that the President must have “the power to
perform” his duties “without any obstruction or impediment whatsoever,” including fear of “arrest, imprison-
ment, or detention.” Brief of Amici Curiae States of Ohio, Alaska, and Wyoming in Support of Petitioner,
Trump v. United States, No. 23-939 (docketed Mar. 19, 2024), at 8 (quoting 3 J. Story, Commentaries at §156).
But of course, the next sentence obliterates their argument: “The president cannot, therefore, be liable to arrest,
imprisonment, or detention, while he is in the discharge of the duties of his office.” 3 J. Story, Commentaries
at §156. Yes, it is a historical fact that President Grant was arrested for speeding in his carriage, Meilan Solly,
When President Ulysses S. Grant Was Arrested for Speeding in a Horse-Drawn Carriage, Smithsonian, Mar.
31, 2023, but no precedent was established in that amusing incident. De minimis non curat lex.
No one seeks to disturb the Office of Legal Counsel’s position that a sitting President cannot be prosecuted
while in office, A Sitting President’s Amenability to Indictment and Criminal Prosecution, 24 U.S. Op. O.L.C.
222, as it is not germane to the matters then before the Court. The better argument is that they can be indicted,
see Ronald D. Rotunda, Letter (to Kenneth Starr), May 13, 1998, available at https://int.nyt.com/data/docu-
menttools/savage-nyt-foia-starr-memo-presidential/ac9e49a727223de2/full.pdf, but it is a mere expert opinion
with minimal probative value.
41
Many of the amici recycled policy arguments straight out of Trump tweets, recycling spurious partisan at-
tacks on the justice system. By way of example, the state of Alabama cited an opinion piece entitled “Trump
Seems to Be the Victim of a Witch Hunt. So What?” Brief of Alabama and 17 Other States as Amici Curiae in
Support of Petitioner Donald Trump, Trump v. United States (Mar. 19, 2023) at 31. Well, the pioneers of the
“witch hunt” defense were Spiro Agnew, Jonathan P. Baird: Spiro Agnew and the corruption defense, Concord
Monitor, Dec. 27, 2018; Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Nixon Sees 'Witch-Hunt,' Insiders Say, Wash.
Post, Jul. 22, 1973. And then came George Santos. Brian Bushard, George Santos Breaks Silence: Calls Arrest

40
Constitution, the spaces between the text, or even the penumbrae from its emanations. Yet,

despite the silence of the Constitution, the Framers’ apparent disinterest in the proposition,

the lack of alternative remedies for executive corruption,42 and the obvious absence of sup-

port for it among the Framers and their contemporaries, the Conspiring Justices indulged a

naked act of will, jettisoning decades of clear and consistent jurisprudence. The question is

why, and the answer is not pretty.

IV. THE SCHEME

Nobody crimes for free. While “motive” is rarely an element of a crime, juries tend to

insist that prosecutors provide one. And here, it distills to filthy lucre.

As a young C.P.A., Petitioner learned that if you want to understand a deal, follow the

money. The “why” is fifty shades of ugly: the conservative Federalist Society judges infest-

ing the Court have engaged in a scheme to profit tremendously from their lofty positions.

“Supreme Court Justice” is the best part-time job in the world. Justice Stevens Shows No

Signs of Quitting, Associated Press, Nov. 29, 2008. The bribes are endless. You barely need

to work twenty hours a week, and only on what you want to work on. You are not bound by

annoying niceties such as “ethics.” You don’t have to answer to anyone. And did I mention

that the bribes are endless???

'Witch Hunt' And Doesn’t Plan to Resign In Dramatic Press Conference, Forbes, May 10, 2023. Res ipsa lo-
quitur.
42
Unlike the question of criminal immunity, the efficacy of impeachment was discussed by the Framers. The
danger being guarded against, in the words of Madison, was that “the chief Magistrate … might pervert his
administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression [or] betray his trust to foreign powers.” Notes on the
Constitutional Convention (July 20, 1787), 2 Farrand 65-66. Colonel Mason all but predicted a crime Mr.
Trump was indicted for: “Shall the man who has practised corruption [through bribing Electors] & by that
means procured his appointment in the first instance, be suffered to escape punishment, by repeating his guilt?”
Id. at 65. Ben Franklin, in reasoning against any monarchical-like system which would place the chief execu-
tive beyond the reach of the law, argued it would be “best ... to provide in the Constitution for the regular
punishment of the Executive when his misconduct should deserve it.” Id.

41
 To keep the gravy train a’-comin, all you need to do is your masters’ bidding.

While our Justices are for sale, they certainly don’t come cheap. The steady stream of

thinly-disguised bribes43—developer Harlan Crow is that generous with all of his friends,

right?—aimed at Justice Thomas includes a $500,000 cash payment to Thomas’ wife, an

undisclosed number of trips on Crow’s yacht and private jet, a $175,000 library wing named

in his honor, several million to turn the cannery his mother once worked for into a museum—

a project reportedly initiated by Thomas himself—and the Bible of firebrand Black aboli-

tionist Frederick Douglass, valued at $19,000. Mike McIntire, The Justice and the Magnate,

N.Y. Times, Jun. 19, 2011, at A-1. Whether it involves attending secretive junkets offered by

the Federalist Society, taking a bribe from a litigant, or duck hunting with a litigant during

the pendency of a case,44 the Roberts Court is more compromised than the average

43
Lest anyone think Petitioner (a life-long Republican) is being partisan here, the $17.5M bribe um, retainer
(traced through the Clintons’ published tax returns) from the infamous George Soros to Hillary Clinton, laun-
dered through husband Bill’s no-show “job,” deserves at least honorable mention. See Jonathan Turley, The
Clinton University Problem: Laureate Education Lawsuits Present Problem For Clintons, Res Ipsa Loquitur
(blog), Jun. 8, 2016, at https://jonathanturley.org/2016/06/08/the-clintons-university-problem-laureate-educa-
tion-lawsuits-present-problem-for-clintons/
44
Cheney v. United States Court of App. for the District of Columbia, 541 U.S. 913 (2004) (Scalia, J., memo).
Importantly, Justice Scalia justified his failure to recuse himself in a case involving long-time friend Vice-
President Dick Cheney on the grounds that the petition before the Court was an “official capacity” action,
observing that

42
Congressman.45 And it is no longer even subtle. Through a relentless campaign of bribery,

our Supreme Court “Justices” have permitted their once-august body to become an unelected

and unaccountable wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party. Sheldon Whitehouse,

The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court (2022).

When it comes to judicial grift, “Clarence Sale” Thomas is the undisputed G.O.A.T., but

it seems that everybody who is anybody in conservative judicial circles is on the gravy train.

And they don’t even have the decency to tell us about conflicts, much less recuse. E.g., Kate

Aronoff, Billionaire Poised to See Return on Investment in Neil Gorsuch, The New Republic,

Jan. 16, 2024. Gorsuch did not recuse.46

...while friendship is a ground for recusal of a Justice where the personal fortune or the personal freedom
of the friend is at issue, it has traditionally NOT been a ground for recusal where official action is at issue,
no matter how important the official action was to the ambitions or the reputation of the Government
officer.
Cheney, 541 U.S. at 916; cf. e.g., Trump v. United States, supra; Trump v. Anderson, supra., Order, Smith v.
Thomas, No. 10-935 (U.S. Mar. 7, 2011).
45
BribeFest has been underway in earnest for twenty-five years. Clarence Thomas’ Private Complaints About
Money Sparked Fears He Would Resign, ProPublica, Dec. 18, 2023, https://www.propublica.org/article/clar-
ence-thomas-money-complaints-sparked-resignation-fears-scotus. Clarence and Ginni Thomas just couldn’t
make it on a measly $500,000/year in today’s dollars, and needed some folding cash (“The month before, the
justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.”). Desperate to retain their ideological
majority on the Court, conservative oligarchs devised schemes designed to fatten Justices’ bank accounts. E.g.,
Frank Rich, Nobody Knows the Lynchings He’s Seen, N.Y. Times, Oct. 7, 2007 ($1.5M advance for Justice
Thomas autobiography, “My Grandfather’s Son”); Antonin Scalia, Form AO-10 (for Calendar Year 2004) at 4
(lavish vacation in Auckland, NZ from Oct. 19- 27, 2004).
46
Robert El-Jaouhari, Highlights from Oral Argument in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Cranfill
Sumner LLP, Jan. 18, 2024, at https://www.cshlaw.com/resources/highlights-from-oral-argument-in-loper-
bright-enterprises-v-raimondo/. See also, the serendipitous purchase of Gorsuch’s hunting lodge by the law

43
 One of the most common bribe conduits is the tender of book advances of staggering

size. Who on Earth would pay the newest Supreme Court justice $2,000,000 to tell us “how

judges compartmentalize their personal feelings” in rulings?47 No matter where you go, the

money trail has a consistent odor. Brett Kavanaugh (mysterious debt payments).48 Amy Co-

ney Barrett (record book advance). Samuel Alito (hedge fund manager Paul Singer, with

frequent business before the Court).49 John Roberts (via BigLaw headhunter wife Jane). For

the average man, the United States Supreme Court does not exist.50 Quite literally, if

firm of famed legal felon Jack Abramoff: “The Supreme Court justice did not report the identity of the
purchaser, whose firm has had numerous cases before the court.” Heidi Przyblya, Law firm head bought Gor-
such-owned property, Politico, Apr. 25, 2023, at https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/25/neil-gorsuch-col-
orado-property-sale-00093579
47
Jake Lahut, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett gets $2 million advance for a book deal, according
to new report, Business Insider, Apr 19, 2021, at https://www.businessinsider.com/amy-coney-barreett-book-
advance-2-million-supreme-court-2021-4.
While all autobiographies belong in the “Fiction” section, see e.g., My Grandfather’s Son; My Beloved World,
If You Can Keep It, to their credit, Justice Kagan and the Beerman have not cashed in on this gravy train.
48
“Who made the down payment on his house? How did he come up with $92,000 in country club fees?”
Stephanie Mencimer, The Many Mysteries of Brett Kavanaugh’s Finances, Mother Jones, Sept. 13, 2018, at
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/09/the-many-mysteries-of-brett-kavanaughs-finances/
49
“In the years after the undisclosed trip to Alaska, Republican mega-donor Paul Singer’s hedge fund has
repeatedly had business before the Supreme Court. Alito has never recused himself.” Justin Elliot, Justice Sam-
uel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court, ProPub-
lica, Jun. 20, 2023. (And remember, “gratuities aren’t bribes!”)
50
Whereas the well-heeled can often buy consideration of constitutional issues because they can afford the
"right" law firm, Cf., e.g., Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., No. 08-22 (U.S. Jun. 9, 2009) (Caperton was
represented by none other than Ted Olson of Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher); Smith v. Bender, No. 09-931 (U.S.
Sept. 11, 2009) (facts were objectively worse for the Government, but the petitioner filed in propria persona),
for the unwashed masses, review by the United States Supreme Court really means a cursory review by a fresh-
faced 25-year-old kid out of Harvard, unqualified to discharge a Justice’s duties—and who has been trained to
dismiss pro se appeals as a matter of course.
And it is not a matter of resources. To say that the Justices are not overworked is an understatement. In a
twenty-year period, their output declined by about 50% (from an average of 155 signed opinions for 1984-85
to about 80 in 2004-06), despite the fact that the annual number of petitions for certiorari nearly doubled during
that time. David R. Stras, The Supreme Court’s Gatekeepers: The Role of Law Clerks in the Certiorari Process,
85 Tex. L. Rev. 947, 979, 982, 987 (2007). And they have not discovered diligence: in 2020, the Court only
issued 65 opinions. Merits cases by vote split, SCOTUSblog, at https://www.scotusblog.com/statistics/ (last
visited Dec. 12, 2021; screenshot retained). Judge Posner authored 90 himself, and still finds plenty of time to
moonlight. Ronald K.L. Collins, Posner on Case Workloads & Making Judges Work Harder, Concurring Opin-
ions (blog), Dec. 24, 2014 (available at http://concurringopinions.com/archives/2014/12/posner-oncase-work-
loads-making-judges-work-harder.html; his CV is available at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/posner-r.

44
you even want to get your foot in the door of One First Street, YOU HAVE TO PAY THE

LADY!51 Really, Jane? “They came to me,” my left foot!!!

A. Loper Bright: The Payoff Pitch

In America, billionaires can buy just about anything—including judicial opinions.

Whereas courts are invested with “the judicial Power,” Congress enjoys considerable

authority to dictate when and how that power is exercised. Ex parte McCardle, 74 U.S. 506,

513 (1868) (jurisdiction is conferred "with such exceptions and under such regulations as

Congress shall make"). “Congress may certainly delegate to others, powers which the leg-

islature may rightfully exercise itself.” Wayman v. Southard, 23 U.S. 1, 43 (1825) (e.g., the

Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 73, c. 20 (Sept. 24, 1789)).

In 1946, Congress enacted the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. § 500, et seq.,

(“the APA”), touted by its Senate sponsor as “a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands

of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated in one way or another by agencies of

the Federal Government.” Administrative Procedure Act S. Proceedings, 79th Cong. 298

51
E.g., Mattathias Schwartz, Jane Roberts, who is married to Chief Justice John Roberts, made $10.3 million
in commissions from elite law firms, whistleblower documents show, Business Insider, Apr 28, 2023, at
https://www.businessinsider.com/jane-roberts-chief-justice-wife-10-million-commissions-2023-4.

45
(1946) (stmt. of Sen. McCarran (D-NV)). It was intended to standardize the lawmaking pro-

cess, and afford stakeholders a voice in that process.

So-called “Chevron deference” was grounded in the concept of agency and two centuries

of precedent: where Congress had expressed its intent in a statute, its interpretation was dis-

positive, but where “Congress has explicitly left a gap for the agency to fill, there is an

express delegation of authority to the agency to elucidate a specific provision of the statute

by regulation.” Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S.

837 (1984). It required courts to accept reasonable agency interpretations of the rules they

wrote. This was predicated on the rational assumption that Congress knew enough to know

what they didn’t know and chose to defer technical questions to people with technical ex-

pertise. Pursuant to that authority, the alphabet agencies have been “filling in the details,”

United States v. Grimaud, 220 U.S. 506, 517 (1911), in vague and incomplete laws for at

least a century.

If Congress disapproved of this practice, it had forty years to pass a law modifying or

even interring it. As such, through their failure to act, Congress has expressed the opinion

that they would rather have non-partisan technocrats making these often-provincial day-to-

day decisions, as opposed to bribe-taking judges, scientifically illiterate goobers, or G.E.D.

-trained bartenders.52

52
In a hearing, Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) asked if there was “anything that the National Forest Service or
BLM can do to change the course of the Moon’s orbit?” Republican congressman suggests changing moon's
orbit to fight climate change, Guardian, Jun. 9, 2021, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHjktX1oQPU.
Even Congress understands that Congress probably shouldn’t be making these decisions.
The dissent in Loper Bright gets this concept dead-solid perfect:
This Court has long understood Chevron deference to reflect what Congress would want, and so to be
rooted in a presumption of legislative intent. Congress knows that it does not—in fact cannot—write
perfectly complete regulatory statutes. It knows that those statutes will inevitably contain ambiguities that
some other actor will have to resolve, and gaps that some other actor will have to fill. And it would usually
prefer that actor to be the responsible agency, not a court. ... Agencies report to a President, who in turn

46
 But a billionaire plus the Justices he bought can move legal mountains.

All legislative rules, including rules of civil and criminal procedure applicable in all fed-

eral courts, 28 U.S.C. § 2071, are subject to Congressional approval. 5 U.S.C. § 801, et seq,

whereas “interpretative rules, general statements of policy, [and] rules of agency organiza-

tion, procedure, or practice” are exempt from the rule-making requirements of the APA. 5

U.S.C. § 553(b)(4)(A). As such, in making all agency rules interpretive, the Alito Wing of

the Court has effectively repealed the entire APA. Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Rai-

mondo, No. 22-451 (2024). But apparently, the oligarchs who provide over 90% of our Jus-

tices’ compensation weren’t happy with the law Congress wrote, and they expect a return on

their investment.53 It’s cheaper to buy a law than to stop polluting our water. But as is often

the case, there are unintended consequences. You can’t even write binding rules in your own

chambers without congressional approval, 28 U.S.C. § 2072, and as a result, your interpre-

tations of “your rules” are more “like guidelines than actual rules.” Pirates of the Caribbean:

Curse of the Black Pearl (2003).

answers to the public for his policy calls; courts have no such accountability and no proper basis for
making policy. And of course, Congress has conferred on that expert, experienced, and politically ac-
countable agency the authority to administer—to make rules about and otherwise implement—the statute
giving rise to the ambiguity or gap. Put all that together and deference to the agency is the almost obvious
choice, based on an implicit congressional delegation of interpretive authority. We defer, the Court has
explained, “because of a presumption that Congress” would have “desired the agency (rather than the
courts)” to exercise “whatever degree of discretion” the statute allows.
Today, the Court flips the script: It is now “the courts (rather than the agency)” that will wield power
when Congress has left an area of interpretive discretion. A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule
of judicial hubris.
Loper Bright Enterprises (Kagan, J., dissenting), slip op. at 2-3 (citation omitted).
53
It’s common knowledge that it is easier to buy Congressmen (and Supreme Court justices) than experts, and
lobbyists write most of their bills. Ailsa Chang, When Lobbyists Literally Write the Bill, All Things Consid-
ered (NPR, aired Nov. 11, 2013), at https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/11/11/243973620/when-
lobbyists-literally-write-the-bill.

47
B. This Is a War Long Planned.

At the risk of stating the painfully obvious, at 78 and suffering from semantic dementia,

Donald Trump is no longer capable of being a criminal mastermind. He is a vehicle, and a

figurehead. But the two-decade right-wing war on the rule of law and the advent of Trump

are integral parts of a scheme which one of its principal architects, Heritage Foundation

president Kevin Roberts, openly refers to as a coup ď êtat: "‘In spite of all this nonsense

from the left, we are going to win. We're in the process of taking this country back,’ Roberts

said. ‘We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain blood-

less, if the left allows it to be.’" Flynn Nicholls, Project 2025 Leader Promises 'Second

American Revolution', Newsweek, Jul. 3, 2024 (emphasis added). The ‘short tour’ of con-

servative jurisprudence over the past two centuries is the relentless accretion of power by

corrupt and self-serving judges, to this ultimate end. And though he was writing about his

State’s legislature, what Alexander Hamilton said in his Letters from Phocion applies to

Presidents and judges, as

their rights and powers are [defined in the Constitution]; if they exceed them it is a
treasonable usurpation upon the power and majesty of the people, and by the same rule
that they may take away from a single individual the rights he claims under the Consti-
tution, they may erect themselves into perpetual dictators.

48
Alexander Hamilton, Second Letter from Phocion (Apr. 1784), in 2 Works of Alexander

Hamilton 322 (John P. Hamilton, ed. 1850). Anderson v. Trump and Trump v. United States

were not just aberrant decisions. They were federal crimes. 18 U.S.C. §§ 3, 371.

Whereas no public official “can war against the Constitution without violating his under-

taking to support it,” Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 18 (1958), the Justices’ odious course of

conduct is the largest battle since Jutland. It would beggar the imagination to suggest that

the Framers, who fought a war to free themselves from “the tyranny of irritated Ministers”54

would voluntarily submit themselves to the tyranny of irritated Judges. Or that the Framers,

who just freed themselves from a King who inflicted “a history of repeated injuries and

usurpations,” Declaration of Independence, para. 2 (U.S. 1776), beneath a cloak of absolute

immunity would ever anoint a King with de facto absolute immunity. The Justices have gone

rogue.55 And the bench has fallen silent.

54
Petitioner poses same the challenge our Founding Fathers posed to Parliament in 1775:
If it was possible for men who exercise their reason, to believe that the divine Author of our existence
intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over others,
marked out by his infinite goodness and wisdom, as the objects of a legal domination never rightfully
resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these Colonies might at least require from
the Parliament of Great Britain some evidence, that this dreadful authority over them has been granted to
that body.
Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (U.S. 2d Cont. Cong., 1775) (emphasis added).
55
Stare decisis “fosters reliance on judicial decisions, and contributes to the actual and per-ceived integrity of
the judicial process," Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 827 (1991). Stare deceased, not so much.
Ultimately, it is all about being able to live a life bordering on the dissolute. The Conspiring Justices always
seem to find plenty of time to churn out mindless autobiographies, rub elbows with the Queen while on our
dime, Queen Elizabeth II Opens New UK Supreme Court, Assoc. Press, Oct. 17, 2009 (four Justices attended—
while the Court was in session!), and even officiate moot court. Jessica Martin, Students Argue Before Chief
Justice Roberts, The Record (Washington Univ.) Jan. 15, 2007. But no one parlayed his position and the celeb-
rity attending it into a way to travel the world in resplendent fashion on other people’s money quite like Antonin
Scalia. Scalia’s travelogue looks a lot like most people’s bucket lists: Berlin. Warsaw. Rome. London. Zurich.
Lisbon. Jerusalem. Istanbul. Tokyo. Copenhagen. Reykjavik. Dublin. Lima. Innsbruck. Melbourne. Banff. Fair-
banks. Beaver Creek. Indian Wells. Jackson Hole. Honolulu. See Antonin Scalia, Forms AO-10 (Financial
Disclosure Report for Calendar Years 2003-2009). And even while the Court was in session, and we were
paying his salary, Scalia took a nine-day vacation halfway around the world. See Antonin Scalia, Forms AO-
10 (Financial Disclosure Report for Calendar Years 2003-2009).

49
 "A government of laws, and not of men." John Adams enshrined this principle in the

Massachusetts Constitution. Mass. Const. art. XXX. But it was hardly a novel concept, even

in Mother England. As Daniel DeFoe of Robinson Crusoe fame wryly remarked, “Kings are

not Kings Jure Divino, that when they break the Laws, trample on Property... and the like,

they may be opposed and resisted by force.” Daniel DeFoe, Jure Divino, a Satyr, Intro. v

(1706). Thomas Paine proudly proclaimed “that in America THE LAW IS KING.” Thomas

Paine, Common Sense 36 (P. Eckler Co. 1918) (1776) (emphasis in original). This is the

reasonable expectation that the people had, and the outcome they had risked their very lives

for. As Justice Miller intoned so long ago:

No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may
set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the
highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law, and are bound to obey it.

United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220 (1882) (emphasis added).

CONCLUSION

We have seen this rodeo before.

When Hitler condemned men to Auschwitz, he didn’t need a reason; the Führerprinzip

of the Third Reich was that “the Führer’s word is above all written law.” Reasons are re-

served for important people, and Muselmanner like myself— non-persons—are not im-

portant. As Justice Jackson observed in his role as a Nuremberg prosecutor:

50
 Having sneaked through the portals of power, the Nazis slammed the gate in the face of
all others who might also aspire to enter. Since the law was what the Nazis said it was,
every form of opposition was rooted out and every dissenting voice throttled. Ger-
many was in the clutch of a police state, which used the fear of the concentration camp
as a means to enforce nonresistance. The Party was the State, the State was the Party,
and terror by day and death by night were the policy of both.

Robert Jackson, Summation (Nuremberg War Crimes Trial), Jul. 26, 1946 (emphasis added),

at http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Jacksonclose.htm.

If there is any discernible difference between the President and Reichchancellor Hitler

under the Alito Court’s ukases, it is not obvious. As Justice Sotomayor observes:

The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and pos-
sibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s rea-
soning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal
Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto
power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune,
immune.
In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.

Trump v. United States, No. 23-939, 603 U.S. __ (2024) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting), slip op.

at 29-30.

Fascism thrives on our fear. It depends upon our silence. “Every dissenting voice” is to

be throttled. The only question Petitioner has for this tribunal is not whether you should cow

Judge Posnor into silence but rather, why in the hell you aren’t screaming, too.

Submitted this 21st day of December, 2024,

________________________________
John Doe,
3649 Evergreen Pkwy,
Evergreen, CO. 80437-0042
[email protected]
(720) 551-2488

Cc: Hon. Michael A. Posnor

51
52