Legal Reform
Republicans, Democrats, and Independents from all across the country understand that our society has become litigious to an extreme degree. Texas has been active for years at improving this problem behind Texans for Lawuit Reform. Since 1994, TLR has worked to pass lawsuit reforms that have made the Lone Star State a model for the nation. TLR describes the problem best on their website www.tortreform.com. "We are small business owners, homemakers, and community volunteers. We are lawyers who want our profession back, and plant managers who want our companies to expand facilities to create jobs for Texans. We are consumers who want to eliminate the wasteful "tort tax" from the products and services produced in Texas. We are ranchers and teachers who have anguished over needless lawsuits. We are doctors and nurses who have seen our colleagues abandon their chosen professions because of the emotional and financial toll imposed by legal assaults. We are the citizens of Texas who want a better future for ourselves and our children." The ability to bring suit for a grievance is an important right in America that must not be abused either from limitation to use or excessive use. Today it is excessive use. The Overcriminalization guide prepared by The Heritage Foundation is an eye opener.
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The Role of the Judiciary

5/16/18
by Clint Bolick,
from CATO Institute,
5/3/18:

... the judiciary would cease to be the least dangerous branch of government if ever it were to accrete legislative or executive powers.

The idea of the judiciary as a watchdog for liberty is an often-overlooked part of our constitutional tapestry, but it was both breathtakingly original and breathtakingly radical in 1787. The idea that courts could invalidate a law or an executive action because it was contrary to the Constitution — this was an idea that really had never occurred to anyone before it occurred to our Founders. And, yet, it is vital to the preservation of our rights and to the notion of a government of defined and limited powers. The very best exposition of what role the judiciary was intended to play in our constitutional republic was outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78. Hamilton said:

"No legislative act . . . contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they for-bid . . . Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative authority. It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both; and that where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decisions by the fundamental laws, rather than by those which are not fundamental." That is the brilliant design that the Framers gave us for our judiciary. And in this regard, Hamilton called the judiciary “the least dangerous branch,” because in exerting its powers, it would only restrain the powers of the other two branches of government. But he did issue a very prophetic warning. He said that the judiciary would cease to be the least dangerous branch of government if ever it were to accrete legislative or executive powers.

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