Kim Davis and the rule of law

Legally speaking, action necessarily begets reaction. If we are breaking free of the old separations of power, it would be reasonable and proper to increase the available remedies against discretionary power. Turning to the modes our ancestors employed would not be a bad idea. In other words, it would make more sense for Davis not to act as a lone individual asserting her rights of conscience against the law, after the fashion of Thoreau, and perhaps Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” but instead to work as much as possible within the democratic-republican system in search of a legal remedy.

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Such a course might, if repeated in other like cases, begin to move us effectively against the excesses of the modern administrative state. Following the forms of democratic-republicanism might also have the beneficial effect of reminding the American people that they are the bosses and the government consists of their employees, a reality the Supreme Court ignores when it takes away from the people the right to decide if they wish to change the definition of marriage.

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