Mat Staver, who represented Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore in an ethics trial that recently ended in his suspension from the court, said yesterday that the verdict in the case shows that “we’re seeing the breakdown of the rule of law” in America that will eventually lead to the “dissolution of the entire republic.”
Moore had attempted to stop federal marriage equality rulings from taking effect in his state, later making the flimsy excuse that he was merely providing judges in the state with a “status update” on the law, a claim that the state’s Court of the Judiciary pointed out had been contradicted by Staver’s own words.
Staver was the guest on VCY America’s “Crosstalk” program when a listener called in to ask, “If Judge Roy Moore can be suspended because of a frivolous complaint against him that has no merit, why doesn’t Liberty Counsel file frivolous complaints against all the judges on the Supreme Court and have the Supreme Court wiped out, and the legislature will obviously have to do something about it.”
Staver, the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, responded that that strategy would never work “because the deck is stacked” against groups like his and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which filed an ethics complaint against Moore, would “throw the rules out” to go after him.
“So what happens here is when the rule of law is thrown out and when people don’t abide by the rule of law and they make it up as they go, then the outcome is predetermined,” he said. “That is the problem that ultimately breaks down the entire freedom and democracy that we have, in terms of our representative form of government, I should say. It breaks down the whole system.”
“In fact,” he continued, “Thomas Jefferson said this: ‘The seeds of dissolution lies in the judiciary.’ What does he mean by that? He means that if the judges, if the courts, don’t restrain themselves and we the people don’t restrain them within their confined duties, then that’s where the seeds of dissolution of the entire republic are. And it will grow and grow and grow and grow, and eventually it will dissolve the entire republic of the United States of America. And that’s what we’re seeing, we’re seeing the breakdown of the rule of law, and when they make it up as they go, it doesn’t really matter. So that’s the problem that we have in this case.”
