For decades, Americans have been led to believe that our legal system is built on principles of justice, fairness, and the rule of law. But that’s not the truth. The truth is very ugly.

The judicial system we have today has been hijacked—weaponized against the very people it was meant to protect. And at the core of this corruption? The American Bar Association (ABA) and the entire legal cartel that controls our courts.

The ABA is not a neutral, apolitical institution. It is a radicalized, ideologically captured organization that wields enormous influence over judicial nominations, legal education, and the entire practice of law. Republican senators, including Eric Schmitt, Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Josh Hawley, Bernie Moreno, and Mike Lee, have now called for President Trump to remove the ABA from the judicial nomination process entirely. That’s a step in the right direction—but let’s be honest: removing the ABA from judicial nominations isn’t enough. The bar itself must be abolished.

The Bar Controls the judiciary—and that’s the problem. The entire legal profession operates as an exclusive club, one that exists not to protect individual rights, but to maintain power. Lawyers and judges are trained by the same corrupt institutions, taught the same convoluted statutes, and conditioned to believe they serve “justice” when, in reality, they serve a bloated, bureaucratic system designed to suppress liberty.

Who writes the laws? Lawyers. Who enforces the laws? Lawyers. Who interprets the laws? Lawyers. Who decides whether you get justice? Lawyers.

It’s a closed-loop system where they make the rules, enforce the rules, and then tell you why the rules can’t be changed. It’s not a justice system—it’s a control system. And then of course they have immunity.  Meaning that no matter how egregious the deprivation of citizens’ rights is, or how profoundly that action causes irreparable damage to lives, the criminals of the ABA and those in the black robes are untouchable. The judicial complaint entities per state are run by fellow “club” members and thus the vast majority of Bar complaints are outright dismissed, never to see the light of day again. Only a fraction of 1% (that number fluctuates somewhere between .22% and .38%) of lawyers with complaints against them get disciplined.

This is a rigged game. The ABA has a stranglehold on the legal profession, dictating who can practice law and what rules they must follow. Judges, who are almost universally selected from the ranks of the Bar, are not impartial arbiters of justice. They are enforcers of a legal framework designed to serve the system itself—not the people. The Bar ensures that judges who step out of line, who dare to rule based on true constitutional principles rather than legal precedent manufactured by the establishment, are blacklisted and ostracized.

This is why our judiciary is so lawless. These so-called “judges” are criminals in black robes, rubber-stamping the destruction of individual rights while hiding behind legalese and precedent. When lawyers take an oath to “uphold the law,” they’re pledging allegiance to a system that was never meant to exist in the first place.

We were never meant to have a bar—or lawyers at all.  America was built on a system of common law. Before the bar, before this judicial cartel took over, our legal system was far simpler and far more just. You didn’t need a law degree to defend yourself in court. People represented themselves. Justice was decided by a jury of peers—not by a career bureaucrat in a robe who answers to no one.

Common law courts were designed to be fast, efficient, and fair. They didn’t require millions of dollars in legal fees or years of litigation. They didn’t allow for legal trickery and manipulation of statutes. They were about real justice, where a jury of everyday citizens decided right and wrong.

Contrast that with today’s courts, where your fate is determined not by your peers, but by judges and lawyers who are financially incentivized to keep cases dragging on for years. Where statutes, not morality, dictate the outcome of cases. Where process, not justice, reigns supreme.

The result? A system where 95% of the time, they get it wrong. They strip people of their unalienable rights, deny them due process, and destroy lives in the name of legal procedure. And when you try to report these crimes? Good luck. Judges protect judges. Lawyers protect lawyers. The fox guards the henhouse.

The ABA and the entire Bar structure must be dismantled. No more legal monopolies. No more judicial elites dictating our fate. We must return to a system where justice belongs to the people—not to lawyers.

This means: Abolishing the bar and eliminating the requirement for lawyers to be licensed by the state. Ending judicial immunity and holding judges accountable for their crimes. Restoring common law courts where citizens—not lawyers—determine justice. Ensuring that all cases, especially those involving fundamental rights, are decided by juries, not judges.

For too long, we have been told that the legal system is too complex for ordinary people to understand. That we need trained legal professionals to navigate it for us. That justice is something only the credentialed few can dispense. This is a lie.

America’s founders never envisioned a system where a privileged class of lawyers would rule over us. They built a nation where justice was accessible, where the people—not unelected legal elites—determined their own fate.

It’s time to take it back.

Abolish the bar. Restore common law. Reclaim America.

Maureen Steele is co-founder of the American Made Foundation.

Image: Public domain.