Supreme Inconsistencies

The chief justiceship of John Glover Roberts, Jr., has been criticized on these pages ever since his nomination by none other than the supposedly “pro-life” former President of the United States of America, George Walker Bush, on July 19, 2005, to replace the retiring pro-abortion appointee of President Ronald Wilson Regan, Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, before being selected by Bush the Lesser on September 5, 2005,  to replace Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who had on died on September 3, 2005.

Indeed, then Judge John Glover Roberts, Jr., came in for a particular skewing from me because of the answers he gave to the notoriously pro-abortion United States Senator Arlen Specter, then a Republican and the Chairman of the United States Committee on the Judiciary, about the decisions of the United States Supreme Court in the cases of Roe v. Wade, and Doe v. Bolton, January 22, 1973.

Here is a review of the pertinent section of the Specter-Roberts colloquy:

Chairman SPECTER. When you and I met on our first so-called courtesy call, I discussed with you the concept of a super-stare decisis. And this was a phrase used by Circuit Judge Luttig in Richmond Medical Center v. Governor Gilmore in the year 2000, when he refers to Casey being a super-stare decisis decision with respect to the fundamental right to choose, and a number of the academics—Professor Farber has talked about super-stare decisis, and Professor Estrich has, as it applies to statutory lines. Do you think that the cases which have followed Roe fall into the category of a super-stare decisis designation?

Judge ROBERTS. Well, it’s a term that hasn’t found its way into the Supreme Court opinions yet. I think—

Chairman SPECTER. Well, there is an opportunity for that. [Laughter.]

Judge ROBERTS. I think one way to look at it is that the Casey decision itself, which applied the principles of stare decisis to Roe v. Wade, is itself a precedent of the Court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis. And that would be the body of law that any judge confronting an issue in his care would begin with, not simply the decision in Roe v. Wade but its reaffirmation in the Casey decision. That is itself a precedent. It’s a precedent on whether or not to revisit the Roe v. Wade precedent. And under principles of stare decisis, that would be where any judge considering the issue in this area would begin.

Chairman SPECTER. When you and I talked informally, I asked you if you had any thought as to how many opportunities there were in the intervening 32 years for Roe to be overruled, and you said you did not really know, and you cited a number. And I said, ‘‘Would it surprise you to know that there have been 38 occasions where Roe has been taken up, not with a specific issue raised but all with an opportunity for Roe to be overruled?’’ One of them was Rust v. Sullivan, where you participated in the writing of the brief, and although the case did not squarely raise the overruling of Roe, it involved the issue of whether Planned Parenthood units funded with Federal money could counsel on abortion. And in that brief, you again raised the question about Roe being wrongly decided, and then I pointed out to you that there had been some 38 cases where the Court had taken up Roe. I am very seldom a user of charts, but on this one I prepared a chart because it speaks—a little too heavy to lift, but it speaks louder than just—thank you, Senator Grassley. Thirty-eight cases where Roe has been taken up, and I don’t want to coin any phrases on super precedents. We will leave that to the Supreme Court. But would you think that Roe might be a super-duper precedent in light— [Laughter.]

Chairman SPECTER.—of 38 occasions to overrule it?

Judge ROBERTS. The interesting thing, of course, is not simply the opportunity to address it, but when the Court actually considers the question. And that, of course, is in the Casey decision where it did apply the principles of stare decisis and specifically addressed it. And that I think is the decision that any judge in this area would begin with.

Chairman SPECTER. Judge Roberts, in your confirmation hearing for circuit court, your testimony read to this effect, and it has been widely quoted: ‘‘Roe is the settled law of the land.’’ Do you mean settled for you, settled only for your capacity as a circuit judge, or settled beyond that?

Judge ROBERTS. Well, beyond that, it’s settled as a precedent of the Court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis. And those principles, applied in the Casey case, explain when cases should be revisited and when they should not. And it is settled as a precedent of the Court, yes.

Chairman SPECTER. You went on then to say, ‘‘It’s a little more than settled. It was reaffirmed in the face of a challenge that it should be overruled in the Casey decision.’’ So it has that added precedential value.

Judge ROBERTS. I think the initial question the judge confronting an issue in this area, you don’t go straight to the Roe decision; you begin with Casey, which modified the Roe framework and reaffirmed its central holding.

Chairman SPECTER. And you went on to say, ‘‘Accordingly, it is the settled law of the land,’’ using the term ‘‘settled’’ again. Then your final statement as to this quotation, ‘‘There is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying the precedent as well as Casey.’’ There had been a question raised about your personal views, and let me digress from Roe for just a moment because I think this touches on an issue which ought to be settled. When you talk about your personal views, and as they may relate to your own faith, would you say that your views are the same as those expressed by John Kennedy when he was a candidate and he spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September of 1960, ‘‘I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me’’?

Judge ROBERTS. I agree with that, Senator, yes.

Chairman SPECTER. And did you have that in mind when you said, ‘‘There is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying the precedent as well as Casey’’?

Judge ROBERTS. Well, I think people’s personal views on this issue derive from a number of sources, and there’s nothing in my personal views based on faith or other sources that would prevent me from applying the precedents of the Court faithfully under principles of stare decisis. (Roberts Confirmation Hearing.)

John Glover Roberts, Jr., meant what he said nineteen years ago as this is what he wrote on Friday, December 10, 2021, in a dissenting opinion in the case of Whole Women’s Health, et al. v. Austin Reeves Jackson, Judge, et al. as the Court, by a 5-4 margin, let Texas SB 8 continue to stand while, at the same time, permitting lawsuits to be filed in Federal and Texas State courts to challenge its constitutionality:

Texas has passed a law banning abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy. See S. B. 8, 87th Leg., Reg. Sess. (2021). That law is contrary to this Court’s decisions in Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992). It has had the effect of denying the exercise of what we have held is a right protected under the Federal Constitution.1

Texas has employed an array of stratagems designed to shield its unconstitutional law from judicial review. To cite just a few, the law authorizes “[a]ny person,” other than a government official, to bring a lawsuit against anyone who “aids or abets,” or intends to aid or abet, an abortion performed after roughly six weeks; has special preclusion rules that allow multiple lawsuits concerning a single abortion; and contains broad venue provisions that allow lawsuits to be brought in any of Texas’s 254 far flung counties, no matter where the abortion took place. See Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. §§171.208(a), (e)(5), 171.210 (West Cum. Supp. 2021). The law then provides for minimum liability of $10,000 plus costs and fees, while barring defendants from recovering their own costs and fees if they prevail. §§171.208(b), (i). It also purports to impose backward-looking liability should this Court’s precedents or an injunction preventing enforcement of the law be overturned. §§171.208(e)(2), (3). And it forbids many state officers from directly enforcing it. §171.207.

These provisions, among others, effectively chill the provision of abortions in Texas. Texas says that the law also blocks any pre-enforcement judicial review in federal court. On that latter contention, Texas is wrong. As eight Members of the Court agree, see ante, at 11, petitioners may bring a pre-enforcement suit challenging the Texas law in federal court under Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123 (1908), because there exist state executive officials who retain authority to enforce it. See, e.g., Tex. Occ. Code Ann. §164.055(a) (West 2021). Given the ongoing chilling effect of the state law, the District Court should resolve this litigation and enter appropriate relief without delay. . . .

The clear purpose and actual effect of S. B. 8 has been to nullify this Court’s rulings. It is, however, a basic principle that the Constitution is the “fundamental and paramount law of the nation,” and “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). Indeed, “[i]f the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery.” United States v. Peters, 5 Cranch 115, 136 (1809). The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake. (21-463 Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson (12/10/2021).)

I stated in 2005 and on other occasions thereafter that Roberts would never vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, and I was proven quite correct in that assessment when the current Chief Justice of the United States of America voted to uphold Roe v. Wade in the case of Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi State Health Officer v. Jackson Women’s Organization, June 24, 2022, while concurring with the Court’s majority that the Mississippi Statute banning most, although not all, surgical executions of preborn children fifteen weeks after their conception:

We granted certiorari to decide one question: “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”  Pet. for Cert. i.  That question is directly implicated here: Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, Miss. Code Ann. §41–41–191 (2018), generally prohibits abortion after the fifteenth week of pregnancy—several weeks before a fetus is regarded as “viable” outside the womb.  In urging our review, Mississippi stated that its case was “an ideal vehicle” to “reconsider the bright-line viability rule,” and that a judgment in its favor would “not require the Court to overturn” Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992).  Pet. for Cert. 5. Today, the Court nonetheless rules for Mississippi by doing just that.  I would take a more measured course.  I agree with the Court that the viability line established by Roe and Casey should be discarded under a straightforward stare decisis analysis.  That line never made any sense.  Our abortion precedents describe the right at issue as a woman’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy.  That right should therefore extend far enough to ensure a reasonable opportunity to choose, but need not extend any further—

certainly not all the way to viability. Mississippi’s law allows a woman three months to obtain an abortion, well beyond the point at which it is considered “late” to discover a pregnancy. See A. Ayoola, Late Recognition of Unintended Pregnancies, 32 Pub. Health Nursing 462 (2015) (pregnancy is discoverable and ordinarily discovered by six weeks of gestation). I see no sound basis for questioning the adequacy of that opportunity. But that is all I would say, out of adherence to a simple yet fundamental principle of judicial restraint: If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more.  Perhaps we are not always perfect in following that command, and certainly there are cases that warrant an exception. But this is not one of them. Surely we should adhere closely to principles of judicial restraint here, where the broader path the Court chooses entails repudiating a constitutional right we have not only previously recognized, but also expressly reaffirmed applying the doctrine of stare decisis. The Court’s opinion is thoughtful and thorough, but those virtues cannot compensate for the fact that its dramatic and consequential ruling is unnecessary to decide the case before us. . . .

None of this, however, requires that we also take the dramatic step of altogether eliminating the abortion right first recognized in Roe. Mississippi itself previously argued as much to this Court in this litigation. When the State petitioned for our review, its basic request was straightforward: “clarify whether abortion prohibitions before viability are always unconstitutional.”  Pet. for Cert. 14.  The State made a number of strong arguments that the answer is no, id., at 15–26—arguments that, as discussed, I find persuasive. And it went out of its way to make clear that it was not asking the Court to repudiate.

 “To be clear, the questions presented in this petition do not require the Court to overturn Roe or Casey.” Id., at 5. Mississippi tempered that statement with an oblique one-sentence footnote intimating that, if the Court could not reconcile Roe and Casey with current facts or other cases, it “should not retain erroneous precedent.”  Pet. for Cert. 5–6, n. 1. But the State never argued that we should grant review for that purpose. After we granted certiorari, however, Mississippi changed course. In its principal brief, the State bluntly announced that the Court should overrule Roe and Casey. The Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion, it argued, and a State should be able to prohibit elective abortions if a rational basis supports doing so.  See Brief for Petitioners 12–13. The Court now rewards that gambit, noting three times that the parties presented “no half-measures” and argued that “we must either reaffirm or overrule Roe and Casey.” Ante, at 5, 8, 72.  Given those two options, the majority picks the latter.  (Roberts, C.J., Concurring in part and dissenting in part, Thomas E. Dobbs, Mississippi Health Officer v. Jackson Women’s Organization, June 24, 2022. 19-1392 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Roberts also defended Roe v. Wade in the case of Russo v. June Medical Services, June 24, 2020--see . For my own analysis of the Dobbs case, please see Roe v. Wade is Gone, Baby-Killing Will Continue, part one, Roe v. Wade is Gone, Baby-Killing Will Continue, part two, and Roe v. Wade is Gone, Baby-Killing Will Continue, part three.)

John Roberts Glover, Jr., wrote about the nonexistent “right” to kill a baby as though mere mortals can be given unto other mortals the right to defy the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment’s prohibition against the direct, intention taking of innocent human life. His respect for precedent is such that he subordinates all consideration of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law to a court decision that defied those precepts when inventing a “right” that is not found within the Constitution of the United States of America and, moreover, is contrary, as many trained constitutional scholars contend, even to due process of law protections accorded to  life, liberty, and property as found in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America.

No one has the “right” to choose to do what is wrong. Human beings have the physical freedom to choose to commit sin, but they have no moral authority from God to do so, and mere mortals whose bodies are destined for the corruption of the grave one day cannot add or subtract anything from what He has revealed to us exclusively through His true Church and/or has ordained in the very nature of things.

To believe as institutionalists such as John Glover Roberts, Jr., does is to ordain practical atheism as the lowest common denominator for public life, something that Pope Leo XIII noted in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God.

So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.) 

As men are made by God to know, love and to serve Him as He has revealed Himself exclusively through His Catholic Church, which alone provides men with the means of their interior sanctification and is thus the sole means of human salvation, it opposed to the very Will of God to permit those who believe in false religions and false philosophies the "civil" right to propagate them openly. God does not want the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood deceived about First and Last Things. He wants all men and all nations to honor Him as their King, which is one of the lessons He was teaching us as Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar worshiped Him at the Epiphany. The Protestant and Judeo-Masonic and conciliarist notion of "religious liberty," having such tremendous roots in the Constitution of the United States of America, and of separation of Church and State thus are at odds with Divine Revelation itself, as Pope Saint Pius X noted in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.) 

The Modern, religiously indifferentist, anti-Incarnational civil state thus becomes a breeding ground for the propagation and multiplication of errors and heresies and blasphemies, none of which have any "civil" right to exist as they offend Our Lord and wound the souls for whom He offered up His life to the Father in Spirit and in Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross. Pope Gregory XVI elaborated on these points in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832:

Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that "there is one God, one faith, one baptism" may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that "those who are not with Christ are against Him," and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore "without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate." Let them hear Jerome who, while the Church was torn into three parts by schism, tells us that whenever someone tried to persuade him to join his group he always exclaimed: "He who is for the See of Peter is for me." A schismatic flatters himself falsely if he asserts that he, too, has been washed in the waters of regeneration. Indeed Augustine would reply to such a man: "The branch has the same form when it has been cut off from the vine; but of what profit for it is the form, if it does not live from the root?"

This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.

Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

John Glover Roberts, Jr., should know better. Yet it is that time and time again over the course of nineteen long years he, though a defender of economic rights, has come down on the side of amorality and statism in the name of stare decisis and, of course, because he does not want the Court’s “reputation” tarnished in the eyes of those with whom in socializes in the swampland known as the Washington, District of Columbia, metropolitan area.

As mentioned two days ago in Supreme Delusions Enable Supreme Tyrants to Supremely Crush Dissent, Roberts switched his vote in the combined cases of National Federation of Independent Business, et al. v. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. and Department of Health and Human Services, et al. v. Florida, et al. on June 28, 2012, to declare the Patient Protection and Accordable Care Act to be constitutional despite its patently unconstitutional nature. 

Indeed, Roberts, who had served in the administrations of Ronald Wilson Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush, punted the ball right back into the political process. Some believed that John Glover Roberts did not want to go down in history as casting the decisive vote against a sitting president’s signature piece of legislation, thus roiling the waters during the 2012 presidential election. It was up to the voters, Roberts believed, to use the political process to effect any change in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party, the aforementioned Willard Mitt Romney, essentially punted on the issue after the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the combined cases of National Federation of Independent Business, et al. v. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. and Department of Health and Human Services, et al. v. Florida, et al. as he was afraid to scare away voters who might derive benefits from ObamaCare. Romney was pretty much neutralized on the issue during election, especially after the Obama campaign started to use the architect of RomneyCare, Jonathan Gruber, in an advertisement to boast that he had used RomneyCare as the model upon which to base ObamaCare.

Government entitlements are goodies that are never taken away, becoming sacrosanct over the course of time as various categories, whether large or small, of groups dependent upon the largesse of the taxpayers form to protect what they have and to demand annual increases in the amount of the goodies they receive. The institutionalization of such goodies also creates a close working relationship between the career civil servants who administer them and the recipients in order to put pressure on members of Congress, especially members of the United States House of Representatives who come from competitive districts, to lard out more and more pork each year.

What a farce.

When it comes to administrative law, however, Chief Justice John Glover Roberts, Jr., has been correct more often than not, and his opinion for the Court in the case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Gina Raimondo Secretary of Commerce, June 28, 2024, which explicitly overruled the Court’s decision in the case of Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council, June 25, 1984, is very correct. It is, however, very ironic that Roberts had no problem explicitly and categorically overturning the unconstitutional Chevron case, which decided forty years ago, but used his “respect” for stare decisis to explain why Roe v. Wad should not be reversed even though it had been made just forty-nine years previously. I guess there is stare decisis and then there is stare decisis. (I will explain the inconsistency a bit later in this commentary.)

Chevron held that Federal court judges are bound to give deference to the decisions made by Federal regulators and administrative law judges, thereby confirming the vast power that had been placed into the hands of unelected apparatchiks who can make regulations that have the binding force of law, enforce those regulations, interpret them, and then adjudicate disputes arising from the enforcement of the rules they have made and enforced. In other words, regulators within the Cabinet departments and independent regulatory agencies and commissions can, make, enforce, and then adjudicate regulations, thereby possessing the powers of each of the three branches of government.

Congress after Congress abdicated its legislative authority to the Executive Branch of the Federal Government of the United States of America from the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” forward, although, as noted earlier, a lot of the spade work had been done during the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Woodrow Wilson. Nearly seventy independent or quasi-independent regulatory agencies within the Federal government exist to this very day, each composed of commissioners who are beyond the control of a president to remove and who chafe at the thought of true legislative oversight of their unconstitutional “rule-making” authority (deemed to be “constitutional” by the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Company).

Readers will note I claimed that independent regulatory commissions (and the quasi-independent commissions) are unconstitutional. I taught this in my government classes over the decades. I will make this claim whenever I write about this subject (or teach about it, if that opportunity is ever to occur again within the Providence of God) no matter the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States of America has ruled that such agencies, which are staffed by commissioners who are appointed by a president for a term, usually seven years, that is longer than one presidential administration but shorter than two, and confirmed by the United States Senate are constitutional (see, for example, Humphrey's Executor v. United States of America, May 27, 1935).

My reasoning is simple: these agencies exercise each powers that are particular to each of the three branches of government as they make rules that having the binding force of law (which rules are supposed to be founded in Congressional legislation) and also enforce the very rules that they create while serving finally as the court of first instance for litigants to appeal decisions made about the enforcement of these rules. Although readers of this site, few in number though you may be, know that I am a critic of the founders of this nation, they are the individuals who crafted the Constitution in order to prevent what they believed could be a tyranny of the majority. Writing in The Federalist, Number 47, James Madison explained:

No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system. I persuade myself, however, that it will be made apparent to every one, that the charge cannot be supported, and that the maxim on which it relies has been totally misconceived and misapplied. In order to form correct ideas on this important subject, it will be proper to investigate the sense in which the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. (Federalist No. 47.)

Behold a system, however, that has indeed degenerated to a point where non-elected officials have the accumulated powers of the three branches of government--legislative, executive, and judicial. This has occurred because James Madison, a virulent anti-Catholic who is considered to be the "father" of the Constitution, believed that there were sufficient safeguards contained within the Constitution to provide a check upon the consistent misuse of power by those serving in the three branches of government.

Such a belief was illusory as men who have revolted against the Catholic Faith and thus the Social Reign of Christ the King will have no more regard for the words of a written constitution that they have for the words of Sacred Scripture, believing themselves to be their own "interpreters" of Holy Writ.

Who are the framers of the Constitution to limit our actions in our "modern" era.

Shouldn't the Constitution be "updated" to meet new needs caused by changes in technology and economics and even public opinion?

The Constitution was at its beginning and remains now utterly defenseless against itself, a truth that has been used by the statists to make short work of its actual provisions in order to expand the size, the scope and the power of the Federal government of the United States of America. The Trojan Horse named Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s, socialistic minions, following upon the “transformative” policies of the lawless Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, have been very happy to expedite this process along to the point of a quasi-totalitarian dictatorship by regulation and executive order as the "people" feast on their bread and circuses.

The defenselessness of the Constitution of the United States of America against the determined actions of a president and/or Congress to proceed without regard for the laws of God and men is just part of the legacy of this country.

There has been a logical progression from the likes of Andrew Jackson to Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt to Thomas Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt and those who have followed in the past ninety-two years since the ignoramus from Hyde Park, New York, was first elected to the presidency,

As I will never cease to remind the readership of this site, a Constitution that is based on no need to even recognize Christ the King, no less submit to His Social Kingship over men and their nations by means of the Indirect Power of His Catholic Church in all that pertains to the good of souls, will produce men who have respect neither for the laws of God or the true meaning of its own text.

In the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo case, John Glover Roberts found an issue where the actual language of the Constitution of the United States of America had been violated by the Chevron doctrine mandating deference be given by Federal judges to the decisions made by unelected and mostly unappointed regulators.

The following excerpt from Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion for the Court provides an example of some of the inconsistency and arbitrariness of these unelected apparatchiks:

The New Deal ushered in a “rapid expansion of the administrative process.” United States v. Morton Salt Co., 338 U. S. 632, 644 (1950). But as new agencies with new powers proliferated, the Court continued to adhere to the traditional understanding that questions of law were for courts to decide, exercising independent judgment.

During this period, the Court often treated agency determinations of fact as binding on the courts, provided that there was “evidence to support the findings.” St. Joseph Stock Yards Co. v. United States, 298 U. S. 38, 51 (1936).  . . .

Turn now from workability to reliance. Far from engendering reliance interests, the whole point of Chevron deference is to upset them. Under Chevron, executive officials can replace one “reasonable” interpretation with another at any time, all without any change in the law itself. The result: Affected individuals “can never be sure of their legal rights and duties.” Buffington, 598 U. S., (slip op., at 12).

How bad is the problem? Take just one example. Brand X concerned a law regulating broadband internet services.

There, the Court upheld an agency rule adopted by the administration of President George W. Bush because it was premised on a “reasonable” interpretation of the statute.

Later, President Barack Obama’s administration rescinded the rule and replaced it with another. Later still, during President Donald J. Trump’s administration, officials replaced that rule with a different one, all before President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s administration declared its intention . See Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet, 88 Fed. Reg. 76048 (2023); Brand X, 545 U. S., at 981–982. Each time, the government claimed its new rule was just as “reasonable” as the last. Rather than promoting reliance by fixing the meaning ofto reverse course for yet a fourth time. See Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet, 88 Fed. Reg. 76048 (2023); Brand X, 545 U. S., at 981–982. Each time, the government claimed its new rule was just as “reasonable” as the last. Rather than promoting reliance by fixing the meaning of the law, Chevron deference engenders constant uncertainty and convulsive change even when the statute at issue itself remains unchanged.

Nor are these antireliance harms distributed equally. Sophisticated entities and their lawyers may be able to keep pace with rule changes affecting their rights and responsibilities. They may be able to lobby for new “‘reasonable’”  agency interpretations and even capture the agencies that issue them. Buffington, 598 U. S., at ___, ___ (slip op., at 8, 13). But ordinary people can do none of those things. They are the ones who suffer the worst kind of regulatory whiplash Chevron invites.

Consider a couple of examples. Thomas Buffington, a veteran of the U. S. Air Force, was injured in the line of duty.

For a time after he left the Air Force, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) paid disability benefits due him by law. But later the government called on Mr. Buffington to reenter active service. During that period, everyone agreed, the VA could (as it did) suspend his disability payments. After he left active service for a second time, however, the VA turned his patriotism against him. By law, Congress permitted the VA to suspend disability pay only “for any period for which [a servicemember] receives active service pay.” 38 U. S. C. §5304(c). But the VA had adopted a self serving regulation requiring veterans to file a form asking for the resumption of their disability pay after a second (or subsequent) stint in active service. 38 CFR §3.654(b)(2) (2021). Unaware of the regulation, Mr. Buffington failed to reapply immediately. When he finally figured out what had happened and reapplied, the VA agreed to resume payments going forward but refused to give Mr. Buffington all of the past disability payments it had withheld. Buffington, 598 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 1–4).

Mr. Buffington challenged the agency’s action as inconsistent with Congress’s direction that the VA may suspend disability payments only for those periods when a veteran returns to active service. But armed with Chevron, the agency defeated Mr. Buffington’s claim. Maybe the self serving regulation the VA cited as justification for its action was not premised on the best reading of the law, courts said,but it represented a “‘permissible’” one. 598 U. S., at (slip op., at 7). In that way, the Executive Branch was able to evade Congress’s promises to someone who took the field repeatedly in the Nation’s defense. . . .

The dissent ends by quoting Chevron: “‘Judges are not experts in the field.’” Post, at 31 (quoting 467 U. S., at 865). That depends, of course, on what the “field” is. If it is legal interpretation, that has been, “emphatically,” “the province and duty of the judicial department” for at least 221 years.

Marbury, 1 Cranch, at 177. The rest of the dissent’s selected epigraph is that judges “‘are not part of either political branch.’” Post, at 31 (quoting Chevron, 467 U. S., at 865). Indeed. Judges have always been expected to apply their “judgment” independent of the political branches when interpreting the laws those branches enact. The Federalist No. 78, at 523. And one of those laws, the APA, bars judges from disregarding that responsibility just because an Executive Branch agency views a statute differently.

Chevron is overruled. Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the APA requires. Careful attention to the judgment of the Executive Branch may help inform that inquiry. And when a particular statute delegates authority to an agency consistent with constitutional limits, courts must respect the delegation, while ensuring that the agency acts within it. But courts need not and under the APA may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous. Because the D. C. and First Circuits relied on Chevron in deciding whether to uphold the Rule, their judgments are vacated, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.  (22-451 Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 06/28/2024. Excerpts from the concurring opinions of Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch can be found in the appendix.)

 

This is all very good. It is very forceful in its enforcement of those provisions of the Constitution of the United States of America that are unobjectionable in their nature even though premised on the false belief that no one belief could unite men in the pursuit of the common temporal good, which, as noted above, must be pursued in light of man’s Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost in an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Heaven.

Herein you see lies the explanation for Chief Justice John Glover Roberts’s deference to stare decisis with respect to Roe v. Wade and his rejection of it in the Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council case: Roe involved the judicial creation of a nonexistent “right” to protect the licentious, unrestrained use of the generative act God has given man to continue the species and to give Him adorers here on earth to live a well-spent life as members of the Catholic Faith to adore Him in Heaven. The Chevron case involved administrative due process rights.

Millions upon millions of people relied upon Roe to live as beasts and/or to treat children as disposable objects that are “burdensome” to one’s own twisted concept of “happiness.” The emotional attachment to Roe would thus, Roberts believed, “damage” the Court’s credibility if it was overturned.

The Chevron, while certainly important to the large number of small businesses who were left powerless against nameless, faceless Federal regulators and had to pay massive fines or suffer other injustices because they lack the financial resources to hire lawyers trained in the intricate complexities of administrative law and procedure. Regulations upon regulations breed the need for government lawyers to defend them and for attorneys in private practice to defend against the regulations themselves and/or their unjust, arbitrarily inconsistent, and unequal application/

As one of my minor fields fifty years ago for my doctorate in political science from the then named Graduate School of Public Affairs of the then named State University of New York at Albany was Public Law (Constitutional and Administrative Law), I can attest to the vast amount of case law one has know simply to pass a comprehensive examination (written and then oral) to proceed to the writing of one’s doctoral dissertation, a body of case law that keeps growing larger and larger with each passing year because of the proliferation of regulations that are issued principally because the Congress of the United States of America, which has been composed historically of a large proportion of lawyers or those trained in the law, has passed complex bills, most of which are unconstitutional in my judgment, that require unelected administrative regulations to elaborate, enforce, and judge.

This is a vicious cycle and, as correct as the decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Gina Raimondo is, it will do nothing to curb the regulations already in place, only to provide those who are regulated with a better chance prevailing in litigation than has been the case in the past forty years, not the process will be any easier or less expensive, which is why I have long stated that any president interested in reforming this mumbled jungle of laws and regulations would have to propose the repeal of every single rule regulation that has been published in the Federal Register, which is where regulations are published and become binding even upon those who do not have vast resources to retain attorneys trained in administrative law and administrative due process to alert them to the new regulations and they are affected thereby. The whole thing is meant to perpetuate big government ad infinitum, ad nauseam. (A truly just president would also propose repealing most everything contained in the United States Code that criminalizes and regulates many of the legitimate liberties God has bestowed upon men to live with a due regard for all just laws that do not conflict with His Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law.)

There is also another irony in all this as it is precisely these sorts of unjust, unconstitutional, and burdensome regulations that Chief Justice John Glover Roberts, Jr., sought to protect while twisting himself into a veritable pretzel in two cases to preserve the unconstitutional take over of the so-called “healthcare” industry by means of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” a monstrosity that created monstrous regulations, some of which are still effective today.

A final irony in John Glover Roberts’s firm rejection of the Chevron case is that he has mostly sided with “public health” sector in its various decrees on policies, especially during the height of the scamdemic, and has been a firm institutionalist when it comes to the governmental suppression of dissenting views, which was the subject of the most recent original article on this website, Supreme Delusions Enable Supreme Tyrants to Supremely Crush Dissent.

Alas, this is what happens when men live in a world bereft of any serious thought about things of this world in light of First and Last Things, something that Pope Saint Pius X noted in Singuarli Quadam, September 24, 1912):

Accordingly, We first of all declare that all Catholics have a sacred and inviolable duty, both in private and public life, to obey and firmly adhere to and fearlessly profess the principles of Christian truth enunciated by the teaching office of the Catholic Church. In particular We mean those principles which Our Predecessor has most wisely laid down in the encyclical letter "Rerum Novarum." We know that the Bishops of Prussia followed these most faithfully in their deliberations at the Fulda Congress of 1900. You yourselves have summarized the fundamental ideas of these principles in your communications regarding this question.

These are fundamental principles: No matter what the Christian does, even in the realm of temporal goods, he cannot ignore the supernatural good. Rather, according to the dictates of Christian philosophy, he must order all things to the ultimate end, namely, the Highest Good. All his actions, insofar as they are morally either good or bad (that is to say, whether they agree or disagree with the natural and divine law), are subject to the judgment and judicial office of the Church. All who glory in the name of Christian, either individually or collectively, if they wish to remain true to their vocation, may not foster enmities and dissensions between the classes of civil society. On the contrary, they must promote mutual concord and charity. The social question and its associated controversies, such as the nature and duration of labor, the wages to be paid, and workingmen's strikes, are not simply economic in character. Therefore they cannot be numbered among those which can be settled apart from ecclesiastical authority. "The precise opposite is the truth. It is first of all moral and religious, and for that reason its solution is to be expected mainly from the moral law and the pronouncements of religion." (Pope Saint Pius X, Singulari Quadam, Sepetember 24, 1912.)

The modern world, shaped as it is by the anti-Incarnational lies of Judeo-Masonry and its hatred for the Social Reign of Christ the King and of the true Social Teaching of the Catholic Church, she who is our mater and magister (mother and teacher), is shaped by amorality in almost every aspect of public life and what passes for “popular culture” in these wicked times that celebrate every form of licentiousness, including wanton misuse of the gift that God has given to man to bring forth new souls to give Him honor and glory in this life and to spend all eternity with Him in Heaven after dying as faithful sons and daughters of Holy Mother Church and the subsequent killing off of children by self-centered parents who live without regard to their Particular Judgment and of outright perversity of the sort that destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gommorha.

Amorality is practiced by the members of each of the two major organized crime families of naturalism in the United States of America. Violations of the Seventh and Eighth Commandments are the norm, not the exception, today as politicians of the false opposites of the naturalist “right” and the “left” outdo each other in stealing what rightfully belongs to the taxpayers to aggrandize the power of the civil state and in lying about each other with a shameless disregard, borne of ignorance in many instances, of the fact that they will have to make an accounting of everything that they have ever thought, done or said when they face the Divine Judge, Christ the King, at the moment of their Particular Judgments.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori explained that no one, including those who justify a fission between “private belief” and public action, will escape the strict scrutiny of every aspect of his life after he dies:

2. It is the common opinion of theologians, that at the very moment and in the very place in which the soul departs from the body, the divine tribunal is erected, the accusation is read, and the sentence is passed by Jesus Christ, the Judge. At this terrible tribunal each of us shall be presented to give an account of all our thoughts, of all our words, and of all our actions. "For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the proper things of the body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil." ( 2 Cor. v. 10.) When presented before an earthly judge criminals have been seen to fall into a cold sweat through fear. It is related of Piso, that so great and insufferable was the confusion, which he felt at the thought of appearing as a criminal before the senate that he killed himself. How great is the pain of a vassal, or of a son, in appearing before an angry prince or an enraged father, to account for some crime which he has committed! Oh! how much greater shall be the pain and confusion of the soul in standing, before Jesus Christ enraged against her for having despised him during her life! Speaking of judgment, St. Luke says: "Then you shall see the Son of Man." (Luke xxi. 27.) They shall see Jesus Christ as man, with the same wounds with which he ascended into heaven. "Great joy of the beholders!" says Robert the Abbot, "a great terror of those who are in expectation!" These wounds shall console the just, and shall terrify the wicked. In them sinners shall see the Redeemer’s love for themselves, and their ingratitude to him.

3. "Who," says the Prophet Nahum, "can stand before the face of his indignation ?" (i. 6.) How great, then, shall be the terror of a soul that finds herself in sin before this Judge, the first time she shall see him, and see him full of wrath! St. Basil says that she shall be tortured more by her shame and confusion than by the very fire of hell. ”Horridior quam ignis, erit pudor." Philip the Second rebuked one of his domestics for having told him a lie. ”Is it thus," said the king to him, ”you deceive me?" The domestic, after having returned home, died of grief. The Scripture tells us, that when Joseph reproved his brethren, saying: ”I am Joseph, whom you sold," they were unable to answer through fear, and remained silent. ”His brethren could not answer him, being struck with exceeding great fear." (Gen. xlv. 3.) Now what answer shall sinners make to Jesus Christ when he shall say to them: I am your Redeemer and your Judge, whom you have so much despised. Where shall the miserable beings fly, says St. Augustine, when they shall see an angry Judge above, hell open below, on one side their own sins accusing them, and on the other the devils dragging them to punishment, and their conscience burning them within? “Above shall be an enraged Judge below, a horrid chaos on the right, sins accusing him on the left, demons dragging him to punishment within, a burning conscience! Whither shall a sinner, beset in this manner, fly ?"Perhaps he will cry for mercy? But how, asks Eusebius Emissenus, can he dare to implore mercy, when he must first render an account of his contempt for the mercy which Jesus Christ has shown to him?” With what face will you, who are to be first judged for contempt of mercy, ask for mercy?" But let us come to the rendering of the accounts. . . .

11. How great shall be the joy of a soul when, at death, she hears from Jesus Christ these sweet words: ”Well done, good and faithful servant; because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." (Matt. xxv. 21.) Equally great shall be the anguish and despair of a guilty soul, that shall see herself driven away by the Judge with the following words: ”Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire" (verse 41). Oh! what a terrible thunderclap shall that sentence be to her!”Oh! how frightfully," says the Carthusian, "shall that thunder resound!" Eusebius writes, that the terror of sinners at hearing their condemnation shall be so great that, if they could, they would die again. “The wicked shall be seized with such terror at the sight of the Judge pronouncing sentence that, if they were not immortal, they should die a second time." But, brethren, let us, before the termination of this sermon, make some reflections which will be profitable to us. St. Thomas of Villanova says, that some listen to discourses on the judgment and condemnation of the wicked with as little concern as if they they themselves were secure against these things, or as if the day of judgment were never to arive for them. "Heu quam securi hæc dicimus et audimus, quasi nos non tangeret hæc sententia, aut quasi dies hæc nunquam esset venturus!" (Conc, i., de Jud.) The saint then asks: Is it not great folly to entertain security in so perilous an affair? "Quæ est ista stulta securitas in discrimine tanto?" There are some, says St. Augustine, who, though they live in sin, cannot imagine that God will send them to hell. ”Will God," they say, ”really condemn us ?" Brethren, adds the saint, do not speak thus. So, many of the damned did not believe that they should be sent to hell; but the end came, and, according to the threat of Ezechiel, they have been cast into that place of darkness. "The end is come, the end is come... and I will send my wrath upon thee, and I will judge thee." (Ezec. vii. 2, 3.) Sinners, perhaps vengeance is at hand for you, and still you laugh and sleep in sin. Who will not tremble at the words of the Baptist: ”For now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that doth not yield good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire." (Matt, iii. 10.) He says, that every tree that does not bring forth good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire; and he promises that, with regard to the trees, which represent sinners, the axe is already laid to the roots that is, chastisement is at hand. Dearly beloved brethren, let us follow the counsel of the Holy Ghost "Before judgment, prepare thee justice." (Eccl. xviii. 19.) Let us adjust our accounts before the day of accounts. Let us seek God, now that we can find him; for the time shall come when we will wish, but shall not be able to find him. ”You shall seek me, and shall not find me." (John vii. 36.)” “Before judgment," says St. Augustine, ”the Judge can be appeased, but not in judgment." By a change of life we can now appease the anger of Jesus Christ, and recover his grace; but when he shall judge, and find us in sin, he must execute justice, and we shall be lost. (Sermons for All the Sundays in the Year by St Alphonsus Liguori in .pdf format; a sermon on the death of the sinner is appended at the end of this article.)

No one in public life today recognizes or accept this as true. More accurately, of course, almost no one in public life today knows of the terror that awaits them by their use of amorality in every aspect of their lives. Not Donald John Trump. Not Charles Schumer. Not Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi. Not anyone, including many well-meaning Catholics who have been swept up in the falsehoods of the counterfeit church of conciliarism and its propagation of the heresy of universal salvation.

Permit me a slight digression as it is important to drive home the point that one cannot do whatever he wants without regard to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law and expect to escape the fires of Hell for all eternity.

Even though Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross to redeem mankind, it is up to each person to avail himself of the merits of Our Lord’s Redemptive Act. Actually, of course, the number of those who are saved is very few:

Woe to you who command others! If so many are damned by your fault, what will happen to you? If few out of those who are first in the Church of God are saved, what will happen to you? Take all states, both sexes, every condition: husbands, wives, widows, young women, young men, soldiers, merchants, craftsmen, rich and poor, noble and plebian. What are we to say about all these people who are living so badly? The following narrative from Saint Vincent Ferrer will show you what you may think about it. He relates that an archdeacon in Lyons gave up his charge and retreated into a desert place to do penance, and that he died the same day and hour as Saint Bernard. After his death, he appeared to his bishop and said to him, "Know, Monsignor, that at the very hour I passed away, thirty-three thousand people also died. Out of this number, Bernard and myself went up to heaven without delay, three went to purgatory, and all the others fell into Hell."

Our chronicles relate an even more dreadful happening. One of our brothers, well-known for his doctrine and holiness, was preaching in Germany. He represented the ugliness of the sin of impurity so forcefully that a woman fell dead of sorrow in front of everyone. Then, coming back to life, she said, "When I was presented before the Tribunal of God, sixty thousand people arrived at the same time from all parts of the world; out of that number, three were saved by going to Purgatory, and all the rest were damned."

O abyss of the judgments of God! Out of thirty thousand, only five were saved! And out of sixty thousand, only three went to heaven! You sinners who are listening to me, in what category will you be numbered?... What do you say?... What do you think?...

I see almost all of you lowering your heads, filled with astonishment and horror. But let us lay our stupor aside, and instead of flattering ourselves, let us try to draw some profit from our fear.

Is it not true that there are two roads which lead to heaven: innocence and repentance? Now, if I show you that very few take either one of these two roads, as rational people you will conclude that very few are saved. And to mention proofs: in what age, employment or condition will you find that the number of the wicked is not a hundred times greater than that of the good, and about which one might say, "The good are so rare and the wicked are so great in number"? We could say of our times  what Salvianus said of his: it is easier to find a countless multitude of sinners immersed in all sorts of iniquities than a few innocent men. How many servants are totally honest and faithful in their duties? How many merchants are fair and equitable in their commerce; how many craftsmen exact and truthful; how many salesmen disinterested and sincere? How many men of law do not forsake equity? How many soldiers do not tread upon innocence; how many masters do not unjustly withhold the salary of those who serve them, or do not seek to dominate their inferiors? Everywhere, the good are rare and the wicked great in number. Who does not know that today there is so much libertinage among mature men, liberty among young girls, vanity among women, licentiousness in the nobility, corruption in the middle class, dissolution in the people, impudence among the poor, that one could say what David said of his times: "All alike have gone astray... there is not even one who does good, not even one." (Saint Leonard of Port Maurice, The Little Numbr of Those Who Are Saved.)

These are words that should terrify each one of us. The spiritually lax and outright moral reprobates do not enter the Kingdom of God. We must pray to Our Lady every day to help us to save our souls as it is far easier to go to Hell for all eternity than it is to go to Heaven. The conciliar revolutionaries preach the exact opposite.

The standard of one’s Particular Judgment becomes higher if he has authority over others. One duly invested with the authority to govern must do so justly as he seeks to foster the common temporal good in light of man’s Last End, namely, the possession of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven. Yes, woe to those who govern who do not make provision for the eternal well-being of those entrusted to their governance.

The month of June, the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, ended at 11:59:59 p.m. on Tuesday, June 30, 2020, the Commemoration of Saint Paul. It is always time, however, to enfold ourselves in the tender mercies of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary as we seek to make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

Every extra moment we spend before the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament and every extra set of mysteries of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary that we pray will help us to be more and more conformed to the likeness of Our Divine Redeemer, Who permitted His own Most Sacred Heart to be wounded by our sins during His Passion and Death at the same time He permitted our sins to pierce His Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart with the Fourth through the Seventh Swords of Sorrow.

We must always remember that this is the time that God has appointed from all eternity for us to live and thus to sanctify and to save our immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church. The graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flows into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, are sufficient for us to handle whatever crosses—personal, social and ecclesiastical—that we are asked to carry. We must give thanks to God at all times for each of our crosses as we seek to serve Him through Our Lady in this time of apostasy and betrayal.

In this month of July, the month of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, which poured forth from His Most Sacred Heart, may we enfold ourselves more and more into the loving care of Our Lady, from Whom Our Lord received His own Most Precious Blood, and to be ever reliant upon and confident in—but never presumptuous of—her abiding help for us now, and at the hour of our death.

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us. 

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Appendix

Excerpts from the Concurring Opinions of Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch in Loper Bright Industries v. Gina Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, June 28, 2024

Justice Thomas: I write separately to underscore a more fundamental problem: Chevron deference also violates our Constitution’s separation of powers, as I have previously explained at length. See Baldwin, 589 U. S., at ___–___ (dissenting opinion) (slip op., at 2–4); Michigan v. EPA, 576 U. S. 743, 761– 763 (2015) (concurring opinion); see also Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Assn., 575 U. S. 92, 115–118 (2015) (opinion concurring in judgment). And, I agree with JUSTICE GORSUCH that we should not overlook Chevron’s constitutional defects in overruling it.* Post, at 15–20 (concurring opinion).

To provide “practical and real protections for individual liberty,” the Framers drafted a Constitution that divides the legislative, executive, and judicial powers between three branches of Government. Perez, 575 U. S., at 118 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). Chevron deference compromises this separation of powers in two ways. It curbs the judicial power afforded to courts, and simultaneously expands agencies’ executive power beyond constitutional limits.

Chevron compels judges to abdicate their Article III “judicial Power.” §1. “[T]he judicial power, as originally understood, requires a court to exercise its independent judgment in interpreting and expounding upon the laws.” Perez, 575 U. S., at 119 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); accord, post, at 17–18 (opinion of GORSUCH, J.). The Framers understood that “legal texts . . . often contain ambiguities,” and that the judicial power included “the power to resolve these ambiguities over time.” Perez, 575 U. S., at 119 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); accord, ante, at 7–9. But, under Chevron, a judge must accept an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous law, even if he thinks another interpretation is correct.

Ante, at 19. Chevron deference thus prevents judges from would mean that “agencies are unconstitutionally exercising ‘legislative Powers’ vested in Congress.” Baldwin, 589 U. S., at ___ (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (slip op., at 3) (quoting Art. I, §1). By “giv[ing] the force of law to agency pronouncements on matters of private conduct as to which Congress did not actually have an intent,” Chevron “permit[s] a body other than Congress to perform a function that requires an exercise of legislative power.” Michigan, 576 U. S., at 762 (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (internal quotation marks omitted). No matter the gloss put on it, Chevron expands agencies’ power beyond the bounds of Article II by permitting them to exercise powers reserved to another branch of Government.

Chevron deference was “not a harmless transfer of power.” Baldwin, 589 U. S., at ___ (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (slip op., at 3). “The Constitution carefully imposes structural constraints on all three branches, and the exercise of power free of those accompanying restraints subverts the design of the Constitution’s ratifiers.” Ibid. In particular, the Founders envisioned that “the courts [would] check the Executive by applying the correct interpretation of the law.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 4). Chevron was thus a fundamental disruption of our separation of powers. It improperly strips courts of judicial power by simultaneously increasing the power of executive agencies. By overruling Chevron, we restore this aspect of our separation of powers. To safeguard individual liberty, “[s]tructure is everything.” A. Scalia, Foreword: The Importance of Structure in Constitutional Interpretation, 83 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1417, 1418 (2008).

Although the Court finally ends our 40-year misadventure with Chevron deference, its more profound problems should not be overlooked. Regardless of what a statute says, the type of deference required by Chevron violates the Constitution.

Justice Gorsuch: To be sure, this Court has also long extended “great respect” to the “contemporaneous” and consistent views of the coordinate branches about the meaning of a statute’s terms. Edwards’ Lessee v. Darby, 12 Wheat. 206, 210 (1827); see also McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 401 (1819); Stuart v. Laird, 1 Cranch 299, 309 (1803).4 But traditionally, that did not mean a court had to “defer” to any “reasonable that did not mean a court had to “defer” to any “reasonable construction of an “ambiguous” law that an executive agency might offer. It did not mean that the government could propound a “reasonable” view of the law’s meaning one day, a different one the next, and bind the judiciary always to its latest word. Nor did it mean the executive could displace a pre-existing judicial construction of a statute’s terms, replace it with its own, and effectively overrule a judicial precedent in the process. Put simply, this Court was “not bound” by any and all reasonable “administrative construction[s]” of ambiguous statutes when resolving cases and controversies. Burnet v. Chicago Portrait Co., 285 U. S. 1, 16 (1932). While the executive’s consistent and contemporaneous views warranted respect, they “by no means control[led] the action or the opinion of this court in expounding the law with reference to the rights of parties litigant before them.” Irvine v. Marshall, 20 How. 558, 567 (1858); see also A. Bamzai, The Origins of Judicial Deference to Executive Interpretation, 126 Yale L. J. 908, 987 (2017).

Sensing how jarringly inconsistent Chevron is with this Court’s many longstanding precedents discussing the nature of the judicial role in disputes over the law’s meaning, the government and dissent struggle for a response. The best they can muster is a handful of cases from the early 1940s in which, they say, this Court first “put [deference] principles into action.” Post, at 21 (KAGAN, J., dissenting).

And, admittedly, for a period this Court toyed with a form of deference akin to Chevron, at least for so-called mixed questions of law and fact. See, e.g., Gray v. Powell, 314 U. S. 402, 411–412 (1941); NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 U. S. 111, 131 (1944). But, as the Court details, even that limited experiment did not last. See ante, at 10–12. Justice Roberts, in his Gray dissent, decried these decisions for “abdicat[ing our] function as a court of review”and “complete[ly] revers[ing] . . . the normal and usual method of construing a statute.” 314 U. S., at 420–421. And just a few years later, in Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U. S. 134 (1944), the Court returned to its time-worn path.

Echoing themes that had run throughout our law from its start, Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote for the Court in Skidmore. There, he said, courts may extend respectful consideration to another branch’s interpretation of the law, but the weight due those interpretations must always “depend upon the[ir] thoroughness . . . , the validity of [their] reasoning, [their] consistency with earlier and later pronouncements, and all those factors which give [them] power to persuade.” Id., at 140. In another case the same year, and again writing for the Court, Justice Jackson expressly rejected a call for a judge-made doctrine of deference much like Chevron, offering that, “[i]f Congress had deemed it necessary or even appropriate” for courts to “defe[r] to administrative construction[,] . . . it would not have been at a loss for words to say so.” Davies Warehouse Co. v. Bowles, 321 U. S. 144, 156 (1944).

To the extent proper respect for precedent demands, as it always has, special respect for longstanding and mainstream decisions, Chevron scores badly. It represented not a continuation of a long line of decisions but a break from them. Worse, it did not merely depart from our precedents.

More nearly, Chevron defied them.