Source: The New York Daily Call, October 16th, 1909. Vol. 2, No. 249.
Transcription and Markup: Bill Wright for marxists.org, February, 2023.
Note: This article was typed out by sight rather than the typical method of OCR software.
The edge of the second half of the article was blacked out by an imperfect scan, so there was some guesswork involved in completing certain sentences.
Words that I had to guess that were partially or completely illegible have been identified with [editor's brackets] in this transcription.
[To] Mr. E. [Edward] Lindgren, Organizer, Socialist Party, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Dear Comrade:
In accepting the nomination of the Socialist party in the Second Judicial District to the office of Justice of the Supreme Court of this state, I desire to call the attention of Socialists and the voters at large to the importance of the office and the great stake that is involved in the filling thereof. Owing to the bustle of a Mayoralty election, with the large amount of pelf which it involves to the professional politicians and others, the importance of this nomination and of the three Supreme Court judgeships in the First Judicial District, being the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, is likely to be overlooked and the campaign for our candidates neglected. This would be a great mistake. For, important as undoubtedly is the election of a Mayor and other city officers who are to run our municipal government during the next four years, it is of less importance to the working class and all true friends of democracy than the filling of our places on the Supreme Court bench of this state for the next fourteen years. It is true they will probably not have the immediate disposal of some eight hundred millions or so of the people’s money during their term of office, which accounts for the comparative lack of interest in their election on the part of the professional politicians and the professional “reformers.” But they will be for the next fourteen years a part of that oligarchy which actually rules this country, and will thus have a hand in the shaping of the destinies of this nation at a period which bids fair to be the most critical in its history.
Of late there has been a concerted effort on behalf of the capitalist class to virtually do away with the election of judges by popular vote in those states where such elections are prescribed by the Constitution. This is sought to be effected by the organs of “public opinion” striving to create a sentiment that the judiciary ought to be “taken out of politics,” and that judges ought therefore to be elected on “non-partisan tickets.” The belief in the non-partisanship of the judiciary is sought to be instilled into the minds of the people as a fitting complement to that other stupendous fraud which is dinned into the ears of every American citizen from the cradle to the grave, that ours is a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” If this effort should succeed the last vestiges of popular government in this country would disappear.
By a long series of usurpations, the judiciary of this country have arrogated to themselves all powers of government, thereby overturning the system of government devised by the framers of our Constitution. The fears of Thomas Jefferson that the usurpation of the judiciary will put an end to popular government have come only too true. The representatives of the people, in Congress and State Legislatures, have been stripped of the law-making power which is now almost completely vested in the hands of the judiciary, and is becoming more so from day to day. The exercise of the suffrage by the people is becoming nothing more than the empty shell of democracy as in the Rome of Caesar or in the France of Napoleon the Third, when the forms of democracy were preserved in order to facilitate the transition from freedom to slavery.
In this crisis democracy’s only reliance is the Socialist party. The two old parties have bartered away the people’s political rights as they have betrayed its economic interests. The party of Thomas Jefferson vies with the party of Abraham Lincoln in abdicating the people’s governmental powers to the judiciary, and in abjectly eulogizing the usurpers as the saviors of the people’s liberties, thus repudiating that great leader as emphatically as Abraham Lincoln is repudiated by the party which still hypocritically professes to follow him. The Socialist party is the only party which dares to boldly take up the fight for the people’s liberties, and does not shirk the odium which an open fight on the usurpation of the courts may bring upon it; particularly during its early stages before the people have emancipated themselves from the thralldom of reverence with which the capitalistic lackeys have attempted to surround the courts. The working class, whom the Socialist party represents primarily, in its fight for its own emancipation from wage slavery, is compelled by the historical conditions of the struggle to strive to abolish all forms and manner of economic exploitation. And it is also compelled by the same causes to strive for the establishment and maintenance of political democracy. True political democracy is the condition which makes the fight of the working class for economic freedom possible. The party of the working class is, therefore, destined to lead the [fight] for the political rights of the [entire] people.
At the present juncture the [fight] for democracy in this country [becomes] a fight against the political power of the courts. In taking on this [fight] the Socialist party does not intend to merely fight the so-called “abuses” of their powers by the courts. The fight against such “abuses,” particularly as the same is conducted by Messrs. Gompers et al in their [fight] against the “abuse” of the injunction with a recognition of the powers now exercised by the courts of annulling the will of the people as expressed in legislative enactments, is a snare and a delusion. The root of the evil is not the abuse of their power by the courts, but their use of political powers which were never granted to them by the Constitution, and which are absolutely incompatible with democratic principles of government. As long as the judiciary retains the political power of declaring legislation enacted by the people’s representatives “unconstitutional,” so long will the fight against the “abuses” of the injunction remain futile. And so long also will the efforts of organized labor to circumvent the decision of the courts “extending” the Sherman anti-trust act to — that is, against — labor unions, [and to] amending that act remain [abortive]. President Taft has already indicated what would happen in case the people’s representatives should pass a law seriously interfering with the [use] of the injunction by the courts — such a law would be declared “unconstitutional.” And it is equally clear that those who have read carefully the latest decisions of our courts, that any amendment to the anti-trust act exempting trade unions from its [application] would also be declared “unconstitutional.”
There is, therefore, only one way of doing away with the “abuse,” as well as “misuse” or other use, by the courts of the powers to the [decrement] of the working class or any other party of the community — by making them subject to the will of the people, by depriving them of the right to declare legislation “unconstitutional.” This the Socialist party proposes to do. And, like everything else on its program, it proposes to do it peaceably, unless the courts should block the way with another Dred Scott decision. For the present the way is yet open. The same [agency] that was used in transferring the sovereign powers of legislation from the people’s accredited representatives to the courts, may be used to retransfer the same to the people. Judges placed in office by the political [agency] of the propertied classes have arrogated to the courts the right to annul the will of the people, and judges placed in office by the working class through the Socialist party may announce the same, thus restoring to the people its sovereign powers.
To this, if elected, I herewith pledge myself.
If elected a justice of the Supreme Court of this state, I shall not merely refrain from “abusing” the powers of such justice to issue injunctions, in order to help the individual capitalist against the particular working man with whom he may be engaged in an industrial dispute. Nor merely refrain from “extending” against workingmen in general laws which were never intended, or at least not avowedly intended against them by the legislators who enacted them. Not to merely refrain from so “interpreting” the laws as to favor the capitalist class generally. All this goes, of course, without saying in a man placed in office by the political organization of the working class. But I shall also hold as a member of that court that the judiciary has no right under our Constitution, which was intended by its framers to create a government in which the three departments of government — legislative, executive and judicial — should be kept strictly separate, to assume legislative powers by vetoing legislation solemnly enacted by the chosen representatives of the people.
By such action I shall again [create] that doubt as to the right to the courts to declare legislation “unconstitutional” of which Mr. Judge Moody, of the United States Supreme Court, has recently spoken as having once existed, but existing no more. And all doubt will be removed, and the question finally settled against the courts and in favor of the people, when the majority of our courts [shall] consist of men pledged to follow the program of the Socialist party.
Louis B. Boudin.
Last updated on 12 February 2023