Une demi-décennie de brassage d’idées par le Tea Party vient de faire son effet sur le Parti républicain des États-Unis d’Amérique. La toute nouvelle plateforme de l’une des formations politiques les plus puissantes au monde effectue un retour à la pensée constitutionnaliste des Pères Fondateurs. Les textes du préambule et du Bill of Rights de la Constitution fédérale américaine en première page introduisent ce thème avec force. Après, une section de six pages entièrement consacrée à l’objectif de la “restauration d’un gouvernement constitutionnel” pose un diagnostique juridique de l’état pitoyable dans lequel la république fédérale américaine se trouve aujourd’hui, et identifie le remède : Revenir aux racines de la pensée théologique d’où émergèrent les États-Unis, c’est-à-dire, au premier chef, une constitution écrite ferme comme pacte social conscient.
Beaucoup de gens l’ont oubliés aujourd’hui, mais les gouvernements civils ne sont rien d’autre des créatures de leurs constitutions respectives, en dehors desquelles ils n’ont pas d’existence légitime. Le respect des constitutions est la seule sauvegarde face à la gouvernance absolue et arbitraire. Ce rappel à l’ordre constitutionnel lacé par la Convention nationale républicaine tonne fort. À titre indicatif, le terme “constitution” figure à une soixantaine d’endroits dans cette plateforme de 2012, alors qu’on ne le retrouvait qu’une trentaine de fois dans la plateforme de 2008. Les références à “Dieu” reviennent à douze occurrences tandis qu’il y a quatre ans on en retrouvait à peine à deux endroits, ce qui témoigne sans doute de la dynamique religieuse du Tea Party.
Cela étant dit, cette dialectique du Tea Party — et maintenant de la Convention républicaine — comporte une faille. En martelant le respect de la légalité constitutionnelle, ils en sont venus à ériger ce texte (et ses auteurs) comme une sorte de summum de la réflexion duquel il serait inadmissible de diverger. Cela empêche la masse des militants de droite de voir plus loin (tant dans l’histoire que dans la profondeur doctrinale) et coupe la mouvance conservatrice de son riche et fécond héritage puritain du XVIe siècle. Rappelons le, le constitutionnalisme n’est nullement une invention des Pères Fondateurs de la fin du XVIIe, mais était déjà un acquis des huguenots français, des réformés néerlandais, covenantaires écossais, des parliamentarians anglais puis des Pères Pèlerins en Nouvelle-Angleterre quelque 150-200 ans plus tôt, comme en atteste l’abondante littérature légale de cette époque, doit voici une sélection…
- L’Instrument of Government, 1653 [Jus Politicum]
- L’Humble Petitition and Advice, 1657 [Jus Politicum]
- Les Fundamental Orders du Connecticut, 1639 [Jus Politicum]
- Scotland’s National Covenant, 1638 [Scribd]
- Déclaration d’Indépendance des Pays-Bas, 1581 [Scribd]
- First Charter of Virginia, 1606 [Yale University]
- Charter of Massachusetts Bay, 1629 [Yale University]
- Government of New Haven Colony, 1643 [Yale University]
Outre l’amnésie du Tea Party pour essentiellement toute l’histoire constitutionnelle pré-1787 et son adulation dépourvue de sens critique de l’actuelle Constitution fédérale américaine, une chose que le Tea Party ne semble pas avoir clarifié est dans quelle forme la Constitution a-t-elle autorité ? Ce document amendable précise par quelle procédure il peut être légalement amendé. Or cette procédure a plusieurs fois été violée, ce qui soulève la question de la validité légale de certaines portions ajoutées au texte. J’ai déjà souligné l’illégalité de la “clause d’exception” prohibant les prières dans les écoles publiques du pays ajoutée illicitement au Ier Amendement par la Cour suprême en 1962. Plus préoccupant encore est le XIVe Amendement. Il fut édicté par le Congrès fédéral en toute illégalité en 1868 (dans la foulée de la guerre d’agression du Nord contre le Sud et pendant la subséquente dictature militaire imposée par Washington sur le Sud).
Cet amendement interdit pratiquement aux États composant l’Union d’adopter une compréhension des droits civiques différente de celle décrétée par le bon vouloir du Fédéral. Au plan juridique, cela réduit les États sensément autonomes en de simples succursales du Fédéral désormais devenu tout-puissant. C’est avec ce XIVe Amendement que la judicature fédérale réprime systématiquement toute tentative entreprise dans les États fédérés pour sortir du présent carcan sur des enjeux tels que l’avortement ou le “mariage” gai, par exemple. Or au lieu de préconiser une restauration de la république originelle sous une Constitution de 1787, la récente plateforme républicaine prône d’en appeler au XIVe Amendement de 1868 afin de protéger le droit à la vie des enfants à naître. Comme si le système judiciaire fédéral allait emboîter le pas.
Toutes ces tergiversations sur la Constitution de 1787 sont vaines. Ce qu’il faut faire, c’est reconnaître la non-légitimité de cette Constitution fédérale issue d’un coup d’État et de retourner au puritanisme fondateur, comme le démontre Gary North dans son étude-enquête Conspiracy in Philadelphia dont voici une présentation vidéo :
·
Davantage de suggestions de lecture en histoire du droit fédéral américain :
- Réponse de Francis August Schaeffer à Jean-Marc Berthoud [Revue Promesses]
- Les Articles de Confédération [Université Laval]
- The Truth about the Federalist Papers [American Vision]
- Bible Magistracy • An Examination of the Moral Character of the Civil and Political Arrangements of the United States [Reformed Presbyterian Church (Covenanted)]
Je reproduis ci-bas des extraits de l’article The Dubious Origin of the Fourteenth Amendment publié dans le Tulane Law Review (le journal de droit de Tulane University à la Nouvelle-Orléans) en 1954. Y est dressé l’historique peu élogieux du XIVe Amendement. Pour une étude différente soutenant exactement la même thèse juridique, consultez l’article The 14th Amendment to the Constitution and the Threat it Poses to Our Democratic Government publié dans le South Carolina Law Quarterly en 1959.
·
THE DUBIOUS ORIGIN OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
·
AMENDMENT PROCEDURE ESTABLISHED BY ARTICLE V
Article V of the Constitution sets forth the procedure for amendment proposals and ratifications. The portion of Article V pertinent to the amendment machinery utilized in this instance reads as follows:
As will be observed, this amending process is a two-step process. Congress takes the first step (submission). The next step (ratification) — must be the act of the States — the act of at least three fourths of the States concurring in ratifications passed by their respective legislatures.
When the amendment procedure set forth in Article V of the Constitution is carefully analyzed, it will appear that the States have the primary of major and final function in the amending process, and the role of Congress therein, although substantial and important, is definitely of a secondary and preliminary nature.
[…]
It is also interesting to note that the final change, in the provision which was about to become Article V of the Constitution, was the insertion […] of the prohibition19 against depriving any State of its equal suffrage in the Senate, without its consent. As pointed out elsewhere in this article, a gross and wholesale violation of this plain constitutional provision, through the exclusion from the Senate of all persons holding credentials as Senators from the ten Southern States, made it possible for the advocates of the amendment proposal to obtain in the “rump” [croupion, « épuré » dans le mauvais sens] Senate the two-thirds vote required to submit to the States the proposal for the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress to the States for adoption, through the enactment by Congress of Public Resolution No. 48, adopted by the Senate on June 8, 1866 and by the House of Representatives on June 13, 1866. […] This submission was by a two-thirds vote of the quorum present in each House of Congress, and in that sense it complied with Article V of the Constitution. However, the submission was by a “rump” Congress. […] Each House had excluded all persons appearing with credentials as Senators or Representatives from the ten Southern States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas [il semble que le Tennessee avait déjà été maté]. This exclusion, through the exercise of an unreviewable constitutional prerogative, constituted a gross violation of the essence of two other constitutional provisions [l’Article V stipule que “not State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate” ; et l’Article I prévoit que “each State shall have at least one Representative” dans la Chambre des Représentants], both intended to protect the rights of the States to representation in Congress.
[…]
REJECTIONS OF THE AMENDMENT
When the proposed Fourteenth Amendment was submitted to the legislatures of the several States, it needed to have ratification by twenty-eight States, being three-fourths of the thirty-seven States. While it was ratified rather promptly by most of the States outside the South, it was never ratified by California and it was rejected by the three [northern] border states of Kentucky, Delaware and Maryland. It was also rejected, during the latter part of 1866 and the early part of 1867, by the legislatures of the ten Southern States [par des votes unanimes ou quasi-unanimes].
[…]
This created a situation which made impossible the ratification of the Amendment unless some of these rejections were sufficient to prevent the adoption of the amendment proposal. The thirteen rejections, by the ten Southern States and three border States, were more than sufficient to block ratification even if all other States finally ratified.
[…]
THE RECONSTRUCTION ACT
The scene shifts back to Washington. The Radicals have a majority, by over a two-thirds vote, in the “rump” Congress from which all representation of the ten Southern States is excluded. They accomplish the passage of the Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867. This Act had, as one of its major objectives, the attainment of ultimate ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment through compelling and coercing ratification by the ten Southern States which had rejected it.
The Act dealt with these ten Southern States, referred to as “rebel States” in its various provisions. It opened with a recital that “no legal State government” existed in these States. It placed these States under military rule. Louisiana and Texas were grouped together as the Fifth Military District, and placed under the domination of an army officer appointed by the President. All civilian authorities were placed under the dominant authority of the military government. This Act, as supplemented by subsequent amendments, completely deprived these States of all their powers of government and autonomy.
[…]
The most extreme and amazing feature of the Act was the requirement that each excluded State must ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, in order to again enjoy the status and rights of a State, including representation in Congress. Section 3 of the Act sets forth this compulsive coercion thus imposed upon the Southern States :
The most apt characterization of this compulsive provision […] is found in a speech by Senator Doolittle of Wisconsin, a Northerner […] :
Military rule took over in the ten Southern States to initiate the process of conditioning a subjugated people to an ultimate acceptance of the Fourteenth Amendment.
[…]
Enforcement of the Reconstruction Act against the Southern States, helpless to resist military rule […] went forward unhampered. Puppet governments were founded in these various States under military auspices. Through these means, the adoption of new state constitutions, conforming to the requirements of Congress, was accomplished. Likewise, one by one, these puppet state governments ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, which their more independent predecessors had rejected. Finally, in July 1868, the ratifications of this amendment by the puppet governments of seven of the ten Southern States, including Louisiana, gave more than the required ratification by three-fourths of the States, and resulted in a Joint Resolution adopted by Congress and a Proclamation by the Secretary of State, both declaring the Amendment ratified and in force.
COERCED RATIFICATION IN LOUISIANA
[…]
The [Louisiana] House Journal shows that on June 29, 1868, Colonel Batchelder opened the session by calling the roll and reading an extract from the order of General Grant. The [Louisiana] Senate Journal for the same date shows the reading of instructions from General Grant to the Commanding Officer of the Fifth Military District emphasizing the supremacy of the power of the military over the provisional civilian government. It was under these auspices that the coerced ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in Louisiana was accomplished.
Even under the puppet government, created in Louisiana pursuant to the Reconstruction Act, the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in Louisiana was not unanimous. In the [Louisiana] Senate, on July 9, 1868, the vote on ratification was twenty yeas and eleven nays. The record contains a protest by Senator Bacon against voting upon ratification “under duress” imposed by the Reconstruction Act, and an unavailing appeal by that legislator for an opportunity for a “free and unrestrained” vote.
FORCED RATIFICATION REQUIRES REEXAMINATION OF PURPORTED ADOPTION OF THE AMENDMENT
The question arises — upon an analysis of the provisions of Article V […] — whether these coerced ratifications should be decreed null and void, as the product of an usurpative incursion by Congress into an area — the ratification, or rejection process — from which it is clearly excluded by Article V.
[…]
If the coerced and enforced ratifications of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Southern States in 1868, compelled by Congressional duress offending against the Constitution itself, constitute an infraction of the amendment procedure ordained by Article V of the Constitution, these enforced ratifications are just as violative of the provisions of Article V in 1953 [ou 2014 !] as they were in 1868.