The brilliance of our founding fathers in setting up a system of checks and balances between the branches of government is evident, even today.
I only wish our elected legislators had enough trust in the people to give them an opportunity to vote on controversial issues.
The Wyoming Freedom Caucus minions attended a meeting of attorneys concerned about the direction our state is moving and surreptitiously recorded the meeting.
Out of an hour-long discussion, the Freedom Caucus took a fifteen second sound bite of Senator Tara Nethercott, where she said, "We need more lawyers perhaps engaging in what we see as lawfare, in order to defend the rule of law, in order to both protect the judicial branch and our democracy."
By running the ad, the Freedom Caucus appears to argue using our court system to defend the rule of law, our court system and our system of government is a bad thing. It's not.
The character, Dick the Butcher, in Shakespeare's, in Henry VI, utters the line, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
Those who are ignorant of the meaning of the play often use the quote as a jab at lawyers. It's not.
Dick the Butcher is a follower of the rebel, Jack Cade. Cade, who, along with his anarchist followers, wanted to overthrow the government and install Cade as dictator.
The point of the line in the play was that lawyers were standing up for the rights of the people.
Courts stopped anarchy. For Cade to succeed in his plot, he needed to end the court system.
In an amazing parallel with Shakespeare, a City Councilman and State Republican Central Committee member, Troy Bray, posted, "The only way Wyoming is going to have freedom is to start hanging bad judges."
The Powell City Council passed a resolution condemning the statement, with only Bray to vote against the resolution.
The Wyoming Republican Party has been silent on the issue. They did vote to engage in lawfare of their own.
Lawyers defend rights.
Judges don’t make the law. They apply the law that is established by the people in conformance with the Constitutions of the United States and Wyoming. Sometimes that application is unpopular, sometimes it may be wrong. The Framers of the Constitutions crafted a remedy for unpopular decisions.
Folks who don’t like the outcome of a case can appeal to a higher court. And if you still don’t like that court’s interpretation of the law, the remedy again lies in the hands of the people and the legislature who can change the law.
Wyoming judges decide thousands of cases every year. The vast majority of their decisions simply resolve disputes between people who need help to get through a business disagreement, a marriage dissolution, a traffic ticket, or a criminal charge. The courts do their work so that people can get on with their lives without resorting to violence.
Once in a rare while the courts are presented with a case that deals with a topic people feel strongly about, like abortion. There is no outcome to a case like that which some group of people will not strongly object to. That is not the fault of the courts.
Judges don't get to choose their cases.
The courts are there to protect our rights. They are a check and balance to a cult of personalities, who, if they do not get their own way, resort to violence.
This talk of violent reactions to decisions based on the law and the constitution is irresponsible and dangerous. It is not the path to freedom, but just the opposite, a path to anarchy.
Let’s stop the talk of hanging the folks who are doing their job of applying the rule of law and get back to the fixes the framers of the Wyoming Constitution laid out for us.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, if the legislature would simply trust the voters of the state to decide a simple constitutional amendment, the whole issue would be resolved.
But, a group of legislators either have a particular brand of arrogance, desire power or they do not care about abortion as anything other than a tool to solidify their power. Otherwise, they would have trusted the voters.
We all need to work to protect the rule of law. The alternative is living under a dictatorship.
Tara Nethercott should be praised for encouraging her peers to defend or system of government.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 to 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
