"Thus saith the Judge"

Related to my post immediately below, is Jonathan Last's post, "Slaves to the Law," on the "easy faith" of some liberals--but also some religious conservatives, as I heard on Hugh Hewitt's show yesterday--to take the ruling of the court (in this case, Judge Greer's findings of facts regarding Terri Schiavo) as the voice of God.

A reader sent Last an extended excerpt of Lincoln's debate with Douglas, in which Lincoln points out the sole basis for Douglas' support of the Dred Scot ruling:

because a decision of the court is to him a "Thus saith the Lord."

Lincoln goes on to say that Douglas refuses to judge the merit of the case on it own grounds. Indeed, for Douglas, neither reason nor faith address the right or wrongness of the Supreme Court's decision regarding the humanity of slaves.

This is, of course, extraordinary. Any liberal today would rightly denounce such a position as immoral or patently untrue. However, as Last points out, this is what they are doing regarding Judge Greer's decision on Terri Shiavo. They mistake the decisions of a judge (and or court) as the highest authority, above which there is no other arbiter. This casually overlooks, and in so doing, demeans the relevance, indeed, the relative importance of the American citizen's conscience and our understanding of right and wrong.

As some anonymous reader, in the comments under Last's post, says:

The law is a human construct, and it's failures are self-evident to any person who doesn't think Marbury v. Madison was revealed to Moses as an appendix to the Ten Commandments. Whenever the laws and courts fail us, as they are doing with respect to Mrs. Schiavo, the response isn't to shrug our shoulders and bloviate about Judge Greer and the wisdom of the Florida Supreme Court. The response is to change the law, or change the judges. Either one will do in this instance.

And change them we must.