Thomas wrote:For two reasons: First, these judges have committed themselves to interpreting the constitution narrowly and close to its original intent.
You have not demonstrated, and i contend that you cannot demonstrate, that a judge of any perceived description is more or less able than any other judge to "interpret the constitution narrowly and close to its original intent." You just pile one unsubstantiated assertion on the other. What was the original intent, and how do you assert that you can describe the original intent? That would be the burden of proof for anyone asserting that those Justices, or any other judge, were able to interpret the constitution "close to its original intent." Don't forget that these judges are adherents, as they profess themselves, of the concept of "natural law." If the moral imperatives of "natural law" were to conflict with what someone could putatively identify with the original intent of the framers of the Constitution, would you expect these Justices to dissent from that alleged original intent, or to abandon (at least in that case) the concept of natural law?
Quote:Sometimes they even make good on this pledge. (See, for example, their jurisprudence on the Commerce, Due Process, and Equal Protection clauses.
In that you do not demonstrate what original intent is, nor where we can look to find it reliably defined, this is another unsubstantiated contention piled upon the former unsubstantiated contentions which you have advanced.
Quote:The second reason is that in practice, these judges use the interpretive leeway created by the civil libertarian Warren Court to pursue constitutionally dubious policy goals of the conservativive movement. (Consider their take on executive powers in the Guantanamo and terrorism cases.)
In which case one could well assert that they are as inimical to legislative supremecy of law-making as are any judges alleged to be liberal judicial activists. Once again, this is an unsubstantiated assertion on your part, unless you can show first that their decisions are indeed constitutionally dubious, and second that there is any substantive difference between the reaction of conservatives who support this form of "judicial activism" and the reaction (veneration of the courts) by those whom you have described as "today's civil libertarians" in cases in which courts can be reasonably alleged to have supported a social agenda dear to the hearts of said civil libertarians.
Quote:Points #1 and #2 have in common that they both frustrate the civil libertarians' tactic of pursuing their less pouplar political ends through creative interpretation of the constitution. The difference between them is that point #2 depends on whose ox has been gored, while point #1 does not.
You have not defined who it is that constitutes this amorphous group whom you choose to label as civil libertarians. Had you discretely defined such a group, you have not established that they universally applaud a discrete set of civil liberty goals. You have not established that some, all or even any of such goals are "less popular political ends." You have not demonstrated that judicial decisions to which you vaguely refer can reasonably be described as "creative interpretation of the constitution."
Most importantly, absent the ability to point without quibble to what was or was not the original intent of the framers of the Constitution, your Point #1 is no less a case of whose ox has been gored that would be your Point #2. Throughout, you have made a set of unsubstantiated assertions, regarding an undefined group of persons whom you label (with apparent contempt) as "today's civil libertarians," by reference to unspecified examples of allaged judicial activism, and upon which assertions you proceed to further unsubstantiate assertions.
Had you simply said that all of this occurs
in your opinion, i might have ignored your statements, or have been willing to argue against some or all of your thesis. As it is, however, you offer all of this bundle of vague assertion about an undefined set of people reacting to an imprecisely defined set of judicial opinions as though you were describing fact. You speak
ex cathedra, when i have no good reason to assume that you are a member of the requisite clergy.
