Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>
> --- Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> <I snipped the atribution of the statement below by
> accident - I think it was Jon, though>
> > > Who believes that the Constitution is MEANT to be
> > interpreted.
It was mine, originally.
> Well, I mean look, it's not intuitively obvious that
> the Equal Protection Clause is meant to include gay
> marriage. It might be fair to interpret that way, but
> it's at least possible to argue plausibly that it
> doesn't.
Agreed. I don't believe that the Supreme Court has yet interpreted
it to include gay marriage. : ) But they might well do so in a
couple decades. And either would be plausible.
> Even more than that, sure, the Constitution is meant
> to be interpreted. But the more latitude you give
> judges to "interpret" the Constitution into whatever
> they want it to be, the more power you give into the
> hands of an unelected elite with little or no
> democratic legitimacy.
The judges are somewhat representative of the will of the
People, because of how they are appointed and confirmed. I
can't think of any SCOTUS decisions that are not supported by
at least a sizeable minority of the population. The Court
does gradually change its position to match the culture.
The recent action that struck down the Texas sodomy law is
a good example. My viewpoint is that the law should have
been tossed out a long time ago, but that the Court was not
prepared to do so until the climate was right. (Others may
disagree with my interpretation. : ) ) And in many cases
where the majority of people disagree with a decision, it is
because people as a whole do not try to carefully think out
consistent positions on how the Constitution should be
interpreted.
...
> Remember, _not all change is
> progress_. If you give judges the power to give you
> new "rights", _you give them the power to take them
> away_. The Constitution was not meant as an
> all-encompassing document that protects _all_ your
> rights, it was meant as a document that protects the
> _minimum_ of your rights, with far broader ones under
> legislative and executive protection.
...
True, it would be good to enact some laws to protect the
"Right of Privacy", say, rather than to trust the SCOTUS to
continue dredging it out of whatever murky basis they think
it comes from. And please don't get me started on where they
got the strange idea that corporations should have all the
rights of people but none of the responsibilities. : )
Back to my original comment. When I said that the Constitution
was meant to be interpreted, I mean that those who wrote it
obviously intended it to be interpreted. If they had really
wanted to pin the meanings down exactly, they could have done
so, in every multi-page amendment. It is SUPPOSED to consist
of reasonably short general statements.
---David
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