The Golden Metwand, Some Powers Were Never the Vote's to Give Away
- Jeff Kellick
- Aug 4
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 16
Contemporary Application to Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 8B
Punxsutawney Hunting Club v. Game Commission: Pennsylvania Rejects Open Fields, 7–0
A Pennsylvania game warden named Mark Gritzer walked onto 4,400 acres of posted private ground in Clearfield County — signs at the road, purple paint on the boundary trees, locked gates — and fixed a trail camera to a tree. He had no warrant and no probable cause. Developing probable cause was the point of the camera. It stayed there for 78 days. And every bit of it was authorized, in plain words, by two sections of the Pennsylvania Game and Wildlife Code that wrote the signs and the paint and the locks out of the law by name.
On July 21, 2026, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reversed itself. All seven justices agreed that the court’s own 2007 decision in Commonwealth v. Russo was wrong and that posted private land is protected under Article I, Section 8 of the state constitution.
Everyone I know cheered. I cheered. And then I sat down and thought about what had just happened — because judges had erased provisions of a statute passed by an elected legislature, and the reason they gave was that a law older than that statute stood above it. That is precisely the proposition Sir Edward Coke spent his life defending, and precisely the proposition Saturday’s skeptic warned us about. Coke told James the First that the law was the golden metwand, the measuring rod of gold by which the causes of subjects are measured. The image is exactly right about the law. It is entirely silent about the hand. This episode is about the hand.
Along the way: why Pennsylvania is the state where the lazy version of the countermajoritarian objection collapses, since this court stands for partisan statewide election and faces retention votes. Why the open fields doctrine rests on a misread page of Blackstone — Justice Holmes claimed in 1924 that the distinction was as old as the common law, and the pages he cited concern the elements of burglary. And the symmetry that holds the hour together: Coke’s ancient constitution was bad history that built liberty, and Hester was bad history that dismantled it. Same instrument, opposite directions. Hester in 1924, Oliver in 1984, Russo in 2007 — three courts in a row, over 83 years, siding with the government. Judicial power is not a liberty machine. It is a lever.
Then a correction I owe you in public. Episode 4B closed on the line “No one ever voted for this,” applied to the surveillance apparatus. That line was incomplete. On July 14, the Huntington, West Virginia, city council sat through a meeting that ran more than eight hours, heard more than fifty residents speak almost entirely in opposition, and voted six to four for a citywide Flock contract anyway. On July 28, Harrisonburg, Virginia, voted four to nothing to terminate its own. In Franklin County, Pennsylvania, the cameras are up. They voted. Township supervisors, borough councils, county commissioners — the most reachable government in American life. So the objection was never really that nobody voted for it. The larger and harder thing is that some powers are not the vote’s to give.
This is Episode 8B of Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — the Tuesday contemporary-application episode of Week 8, following Saturday’s Episode 8, “The Common Law Will Control,” on Sir Edward Coke and the Stuart struggle. Every episode of this series asks the same question of every consequential action: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?
⏱️ CHAPTERS
00:00 The Clearfield County Hunting Club vs. The Game Warden
03:38 Introduction: Episode 8, Part B — The Golden Metwand
05:09 Sir Edward Coke's Claim: The Law Above the King
07:34 The "Unelected Judges" Objection and Pennsylvania's Elected Court
09:25 The Golden Metwand vs. The Crooked Cord of Discretion
10:26 Justice Brobson's Reasoning: "Possessions" and the PA Constitution
13:27 The Flawed Origins of the Open Fields Doctrine
18:50 Contemporary Surveillance: Flock Cameras and Local Town Votes
23:22 The Limits of Majority Rule and Delegated Authority
26:36 The Reckoning: A Partial Victory and the Courts as a Tool
29:23 Objections: Rule by Judges and Public Road Surveillance
31:18 Answering the Skeptic: The Double-Edged Sword of the Judiciary
34:38 The Liberty Test: The Power to Build a Surveillance Dossier
38:56 Preview of Thursday's Interview with Ryan Peltier
40:14 Conclusion and Call to Action
📚 Read the companion article, “The Common Law Will Control — Sir Edward Coke and the Stuart Struggle,” at consequentialactions.com.
Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 8B, “The Golden Metwand” | Consequential Actions Podcast | Host: Jeff Kellick
—
Constitutional and foreign-policy analysis through the lens of liberty.
Comments