Justice & Law Quote by Lamar S. Smith

A neat little civics lesson that doubles as a power move. By stressing that the Supreme Court is "not elected", Lamar S. Smith isn't just stating a constitutional fact; he's laundering a political argument through a democratic instinct most Americans share: if you can't vote someone out, why should they get to decide the big stuff?

The phrase "proper arbiter" does the real work. It implies legitimacy is a matter of electoral accountability, not constitutional design. That framing quietly sidelines why courts exist in the first place: to apply rights and limits that are intentionally insulated from day-to-day majoritarian pressure. It's a rhetorical inversion. The Court is being faulted for the very feature that makes it useful when social policy collides with minority rights, unpopular speech, reproductive autonomy, or any issue where the majority can get impatient with constraints.

There's also a strategic narrowing in "social policy". Nobody calls the Court illegitimate when it protects property rights, deregulates campaign finance, or narrows federal agencies; those outcomes get coded as law, not "social policy". Labeling certain disputes as social is a way to delegitimize the rulings you dislike while leaving the institution intact when it serves your coalition.

Context matters: this is a familiar line in modern conservative politics, especially in moments when landmark decisions feel like social change delivered from above. It's less an argument against judicial power than an argument for who should wield it, and when.