The Tenpenny Files with Senator Dave Howard & James Rigby

Power shifts in silence. Authority expands when language goes unchallenged. Senator Dave Howard and attorney James Rigby place that quiet expansion under a microscope and identify a pattern that has shaped American governance for generations.

The conversation traces the belief that courts possess a power that the Constitution never granted. Senator Dave Howard describes watching judges issue directives that reach far beyond the act of ruling on a dispute. A court decision becomes a command directed at elected branches of government. The structure described in the Constitution becomes something entirely different in practice.

James Rigby approaches the issue through four decades of courtroom experience. The discussion returns repeatedly to a single question that rarely receives scrutiny in public discourse. Courts resolve cases between parties. Courts deliver judgment in that case. The discussion exposes how a narrow judicial function transformed into something broader through habit, precedent language, and repetition across decades of rulings.

Historical milestones enter the discussion with growing intensity. Marbury v. Madison appears as the hinge point in American legal teaching. The conversation moves carefully through the language of that decision and the later interpretation that emerged in the mid twentieth century. Senator Howard describes reading the original text line by line and finding no declaration that courts stand above the Constitution itself.

Rigby follows that trail into the legal profession itself. Law students study cases that interpret the Constitution. Few students examine the document in its original context or study the surrounding writings that explain the founders’ intent. The result forms a legal culture that assumes authority where the text does not grant it.

The conversation turns toward the political environment that allowed the shift to continue.

Legislatures avoid confrontation with courts. Courts issue decisions that reach beyond the dispute before them. The cycle repeats until an interpretation becomes accepted practice. Rigby describes a judiciary that accumulates influence through language repeated across decades of decisions.

Senator Howard frames the situation in blunt terms. A population unfamiliar with its own constitutional structure cannot recognize when power changes hands. Judges step beyond the limits of their role. Legislatures decline to challenge the expansion. The public absorbs the outcome as normal governance.

If you think you understand how the courts actually work in this country, you might want to hear this conversation.

Meet our Guests:

Senator Dave Howard served thirteen years in the Montana legislature after a career that included service as a U.S. Army Vietnam veteran, FBI agent, minister, and national radio host. James Rigby practiced bankruptcy law for forty years in Seattle and spent decades inside federal courtrooms studying the mechanics of judicial decisions. Their book examines the growth of judicial supremacy through historical court rulings and constitutional interpretation, arguing that the structure of American government shifted through precedent rather than amendment.

Website:

Book: The Supreme Court’s Confidence Game: The Lie of “Judicial Supremacy”: The Theft of Power and Control From “We the People”