Faith & Spirit Quote by Alcee Hastings

Hastings frames a constitutional argument in the language of moral recoil, and that’s the tell. Invoking God here isn’t a pious flourish so much as a rhetorical shield: if judicial review is part of the nation’s civic architecture, then dismantling it isn’t just bad policy, it borders on sacrilege. He’s trying to move the debate out of the tactical swamp of partisan advantage and into a higher register where court-stripping sounds like an attack on the rule of law itself.

The pivot phrase is “albeit with the divergent opinions.” Hastings concedes the thing everyone in the room is mad about: judges disagree, decisions frustrate voters, outcomes feel ideological. But he treats disagreement as a feature, not a bug - the messy byproduct of an independent judiciary tasked with interpreting statutes and the Constitution under real-world pressure. That concession disarms the easy caricature that defenders of the courts are simply defending outcomes they like.

“I shudder” does more work than “I disagree.” It marks his colleagues’ proposal as naïve in a dangerous way, less an honest difference than a failure to grasp “the dynamics” - the separation of powers, lifetime tenure, precedent, the court’s role as referee when the political branches overreach. The subtext is accusation: you’re not reformers; you’re arsonists, and you don’t even understand the building you’re setting on fire.

Contextually, this fits the recurrent congressional temptation to punish courts for unpopular rulings by limiting jurisdiction or authority. Hastings is warning that once lawmakers start shrinking judicial power for short-term wins, they normalize a playbook that any future majority can weaponize.