Montanans must challenge bad law

Letter to the Editor:

Have you ever heard of the term lawfare?  Lawfare is not a new word nor a new concept and is probably best defined as being the use of law as a weapon of war. Lawfare is asserted by some to be the illegitimate use of domestic law with the intention of damaging an opponent. In other words, lawfare is the abuse of Western laws and judicial systems masterfully courted by propaganda (media warfare) to achieve political ends. It commonly consists of negative manipulation of national human- rights laws to accomplish purposes other than, or contrary to, those lawful purposes for which they were enacted.   

The people of Montana (opponents) were witness to lawfare with the highly controversial SB262 (Consolidated Salish-Kootenai Tribes Water Compact), signed into law April 24, 2015. The leaders of the Montana Legislature, namely the Governor and the Attorney General along with Department of Natural Resources and the Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission, led the charge. The Compact declares federal jurisdiction over most of western Montana’s future water uses among other unprecedented fundamentals. The main compact sidebar selling points were “forever certainty (yay) and the fear of forever and costly litigation (yuck).   

Forget about the common ground of historical and judicial facts found in the middle for the Tribes and non-tribal Montana residents. Lawfare serves to silence and punish free speech, delegitimize the sovereignty of the United States of America and to hinder the ability of democracies to fight against federal encroachment. The ultimate goal of lawfare is to cause the participating public to no longer care, and to no longer care is tantamount to accepting tyranny.  

The people of Montana do care, will never forget and will never quit. Lawfare exists and the only way to combat lawfare is head on, in the courts with a jury of your peers. The sad reality is that the people of America and of Montana can no longer afford to  not challenge bad law at the court level. A big thank you to the Flathead Joint Board of Control for bringing forth a valid lawsuit in Lake County District Court challenging the validity of this compact.

David Passieri,

St. Ignatius