Dear Editor,
The Nebraska Supreme Court recently decided a workplace dress code fight over jeans. At some hazard to my dignity, I ask why in the world such a high and mighty court sees fit to deal with such a picayune matter?
The answer came to me in a book of American legal history. American courts early-on gave themselves “power to answer any conceivable question which any conceivable litigant might choose to ask,” including questions which “lie well beyond the limits of judicial competence.”
A representative panel of working people might just as well have decided the jeans issue, or perhaps even a fashion-conscious 13-year-old girl.
The answer to why courts always want to be the “final decider,” as George W. Bush called himself, comes from the long history of absolutist kings. Who wouldn’t want such power if the people gave it to them?
Before the migrating children of Israel decided how they were going to live, Moses sat down to judge every legal matter. The people finally said “enough!” and designated lower levels of citizens to deal with all their squabbles.
Petitioning to Pharaoh, or to a panel of nine Pharaohs, is a miserable, costly, and unnecessary way to do things, don’t you think?
