A free society resolves its most profound moral crises not through the exertion of physical force, but through the rigorous application of the law and reason.
To defend the sanctity of life in a constitutional republic, we must rely entirely on the intellect, the text, and the structural brilliance of the system our Founders left us.
Today, our republic faces two distinct threats: the reckless rhetoric of the mob on the outside, and the quiet arrogance of the legal elite on the inside.
Amid this chaos, there is a beacon of intellectual courage.
Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Kari Gray, through her solitary and heroic dissenting opinion in the court's Jan. 6 ruling in State v. Johnson, has provided the exact blueprint we need to redeem our courts.
To understand the magnitude of her dissent, we must first examine the dangerous philosophies against which she's fighting.
The Disservice Of The Mob
We saw the failure of intellect just days ago.
Following a district court's decision to enjoin Wyoming's Heartbeat Act, Powell City Councilman Troy Bray took to social media to suggest that Wyoming should start "hanging bad judges."
To be clear, this rhetoric is a profound disservice to the pro-life cause. It is the language of the vigilante.
When a public official abandons constitutional logic for calls to violence, he hands the judicial establishment and abortionists exactly what they want.
He grants them permission to dismiss our rigorous, text-based legal critiques as the ravings of unhinged extremists.
We cannot claim to defend the sanctity of human life while simultaneously threatening the lives of those with whom we disagree. The defense of life requires the discipline of reason, not the chaos of the mob.
The Vandalism Of The Elite
If the mob threatens the republic with violence, the legal elite threaten it with a far more insidious poison: judicial arrogance.
Recently, I have heard lawyers refuting me by saying the Constitution is “a living thing, designed to meet the needs of progressive society."
These are dangerous words.
To say a constitution is a "living document" is to say it is a dead constitution. This sounds like a paradox, but it is a fundamental truth of law.
The entire purpose of a written constitution is to act as an anchor, not a weathervane. It is deliberately designed to restrict government power and impede change, preventing the political passions of the moment from overriding fundamental rights.
If a constitution "lives"—if its words magically mutate to accommodate whatever a judge decides a "progressive society" needs today—then it ceases to function as a restraint.
It is dead.
A referee who alters the dimensions of the field in the middle of a game is no longer applying the rules; he is just dictating the final score.
When a judge embraces the living document philosophy, they cease to be a neutral umpire and become a robed politician. It is a blank check for judicial tyranny.
A Rigged Jurisprudence
We saw this exact hubris weaponized by the Wyoming Supreme Court earlier this year in State v. Johnson. Faced with a 2012 amendment to the Wyoming Constitution that says competent adults have a right to choose their own health care, the justices signing the majority opinion simply breathed their own progressive policy preferences into the document.
They ignored subsection (c), which explicitly grants the legislature the textual authority to enact reasonable and necessary restrictions to that health care right, to protect the general welfare.
They transformed an amendment originally meant to protect citizens from federal overreach into a fabricated, fundamental right to abortion. And they armed it with the highest protections a court can give.
They treated the Constitution not as a binding contract, but as a lump of clay.
The Heroism Of Justice Gray
How do we fight this? With the quiet, devastating power of intellectual fidelity.
There is a sacred duty inherent in the legal profession.
Thomas More, the great English chancellor and patron saint of lawyers, went to the executioner's block because he refused to bend the plain words of the law to fit the political demands of King Henry VIII. More recognized that, when a judge abandons the strict meaning of the text to appease the spirit of the age, the rule of law collapses into the rule of men.
Justice Kari Gray honored the legacy of Thomas More.
Her stance in State v. Johnson was a truly heroic defense of life, precisely because it was a heroic defense of the law. She refused to treat the Wyoming Constitution as a living, breathing mechanism for social engineering.
Justice Gray did something astonishing in our modern legal climate: she actually read the entire amendment. She recognized that the text explicitly grants the legislature, not the courts, the power to determine reasonable restrictions on health care decisions.
She possessed the judicial humility to say that she would defer to the legislature's authority, recognizing her job is to apply the law exactly as it is written.
A living constitution is a rigged game in which the citizens are always the losers. We do not need a constitution that evolves. That is what the legislative process is for.
And we certainly do not need the violent rhetoric of those who fail to understand the intellectual rigor required to maintain a republic.
Justice Gray proved that there is at least one justice in Cheyenne who still believes in the separation of powers.
We must demand a judiciary filled with men and women who possess the humility to follow her lead, put their personal politics aside, and simply read the law.
