Original Songs

The Law Don’t Live Here Anymore

Sometimes a song doesn’t feel written—it just shows up, heavy and necessary. This one hit while the news played like a trailer for the end times. I watched the institutions I’d trusted since childhood crack like drought-split ground. I reached for my guitar the way others have in hard times—not to fix anything, just to call it what it is.

The Law Don’t Live Here Anymore isn’t about mourning what we’ve lost. It’s a snapshot of what we’re calling democracy these days, tracked in D minor where all the warnings land. It’s the sound of gavels that used to ring like church bells now just tapping like broken clocks, of marble halls that forgot what they were built for.

This is a song for everyone who’s watched power dress itself in robes it doesn’t deserve, for everyone who knows that truth doesn’t die—it just waits outside while the liars throw their party. Cold as winter. Coming like spring.

[Verse 1]

The courthouse steps are cracked with time,
The marble faded, stained with crime
Where justice stood with steady hands,
Now silence settles on the land.

The gavel used to echo wide,
Like thunder rolling through the pines,
But now it’s just a hollow sound,
Where power’s bought and truth ain’t found.

[Verse 2]

He fired the ones who spoke too loud,
The ones who wouldn’t kiss the crown,
Signed papers soaked in smoke and pride,
Let guilty men just walk outside.

The faithful got their pardons clean,
The rest were swept behind the screen.
We used to read the law like prayer —
Now it’s just ink in poisoned air.

[Chorus 1]

The law don’t live here anymore,
Just shadows pacing polished floors.
You can swear your oath and shut the door,
But the law don’t live here anymore.

[Verse 3]

The streets are lined with quiet eyes,
That turn away when justice dies.
And those in robes who once stood tall,
Now tremble when the tyrants call.

[Verse 4]

I ain’t no judge, I ain’t no saint,
But I know power when it ain’t.
And if we turn our faces gray,
The night will steal the light away.

So write it loud on every wall,
The truth don’t kneel, it don’t crawl.
A whisper grows when it’s ignored —
That’s how the flood breaks down the door.

[Chorus 2 – Variation]

The truth don’t walk these halls no more,
She left her scales outside the door.
They traded blindfolds in for war —
The truth don’t walk these halls no more.

[Outro – Spoken]

The law don’t live here… but she’s still out there, waiting.

I wrote this in the tradition of protest singers who came before—people who understood that sometimes the most radical act is simply naming what you see. In courtrooms across the country, in DOJ offices gutted of career prosecutors, in ethics committees that no longer meet, we’re watching the systematic dismantling of guardrails we thought were permanent.

But here’s what they don’t understand about songs like this: they multiply. One person sings it in their kitchen. Another hums it at a protest. Someone picks up a guitar at an open mic and suddenly the truth that got kicked out of the courthouse is standing on every street corner, patient as gravity, inevitable as dawn.

The law may not live in those marble halls anymore. But she lives in us—every time we refuse to look away, every time we call a lie a lie, every time we reach for whatever instrument we have and say: this is what I see. This is what I know. This is what I won’t let you make me forget.