CLIFFORD TAYLOR OF NEW YORK-COLONIAL ADMIRALTY JUDGE

(With apologies to Steve Martin and his immortal Theodoric of York)
The various pronouncements coming from the Michigan Supreme Court over the past decade have led me to reread some of our American Colonial History. Our current Supreme Court will, under the guise of its "textualist" judicial philosophy, will enforce will enforce, as written, what it determines to be the "simple meaning" of words in any legislation passed with procedural legitimacy. If this leads to absurd, unfair, and unjust results(generally for individual citizens. Big Business and Big Insurance get along fine, thank you), so be it. For a Michigan judge, a sense of grammar and syntax is more important than a sense of justice and wisdom. I believe that our Supreme Court believes that Justice, in the State of Michigan can be properly meted out by an entry level clerk with a dictionary in one hand and a statute book in the other. Emphasis on the dictionary, mind you.
Prior to the American Revolution, the English Parliament passed various acts, all by legitimate procedure, that imposed unjust burdens on American Colonists. As schoolchildren we learned about the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, and the Intolerable Acts. This last was a name given to a group of laws that included the following:
• The Boston Port Bill became effective on June 1, 1774. The King closed Boston Harbor to everything but British ships.
• The Quartering Act was established on March 24, 1765. The King sent lots of British troops to Boston. The colonists had to house and feed the British troops. If the colonists didn't do this for the British troops, they would get shot.
• The Administration of Justice Act became effective May 20, 1774. British Officials could not be tried in colonial courts for crimes. They would be taken back to Britain and have a trial there. That left the British free to do whatever they wanted in the colonies and to the Colonists.
• Massachusetts Government Act became effective on May 20, 1774. The British Governor was in charge of all the town meetings in Boston. There would no more self-government in Boston.
• The Quebec Act was established on May 20, 1774, This bill extended the Canadian borders to cut off the western colonies of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Virginia.
Intolerable they may have been called, but procedurally legitimate and textually enforceable they were. As such they would have been cheerfully enforced, as written, by Michigan Supreme Court Justice Clifford Taylor had he been practicing his peculiar talents as a judge back then.
I can see it, Squire Clifford Taylor, appointed by King George III (predecessor to John Engler) as an Admiralty Court Judge, transporting protesting colonists into slavery in the Sugar Islands for violating the simple meaning of the words of the Quartering Act. Oh, I am sorry; the simple wording of the Act stated that violators would be shot.
If you think this is an exaggeration, please consider what treatment our Federal government currently accords, under color of law, to those classified as enemy combatants at Quantanamo Bay.
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