Posted on 09/27/2010 6:01:50 AM PDT by reaganaut1
During interviews about his new book, Justice Stephen Breyer has spoken mainly about one of its two themes, how the Supreme Court should decide cases. A week before the court’s new term, it’s the second theme — about the court’s legitimacy, or the respect it relies on — that deserves attention.
In the last term of the conservative Roberts court, only Justice John Paul Stevens voted less often with the majority than Justice Breyer. This record, Justice Breyer’s 16 years on the court and Justice Stevens’s retirement make Justice Breyer the likely leader of the more liberal justices in the next term.
In his dissent from a decision striking down the District of Columbia’s gun-control law, he showed why. “In my view,” he said, “there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.”
Still, he fits no conventional model of a liberal. The historian Jeff Shesol wrote in The Times Book Review: “Breyer has been less willing than any of his fellow justices to overturn acts of Congress.” The Supreme Court now has no old-fashioned liberals, like William Brennan or Thurgood Marshall. If it did, Justice Breyer’s deference to Congress would likely make him a centrist.
So would his view of how the court should decide cases. As he puts it in the book, “Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View,” the court “must thoughtfully employ a set of traditional legal tools in service of a pragmatic approach to interpreting the law.” Pragmatic means reckoning with a law’s words and history and the precedents interpreting it, but also its “purposes and related consequences, to help make the law effective.” The goal, he says, is “to apply the Constitution’s enduring values to changing circumstances.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Let's have a debate over the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. Maybe Breyer or Ginsburg could explain to me where the Constitution decrees a right to abortion. (I think abortion ought to be legal but that the issue should be decided at the state level, as it was before Roe.)
The 2nd is the most clear of the Amendments - none other has 'shall not be infinged' incorporated into it. Yet Breyer can't discern an enumerated right here?
And the stupidity of his statement is staggering - if you live in a crime-ridden urban area, you need a gun at home more than anyone.
Which one of those lefty imbiciles on the SC said we have to look to foreign law? To me, that is a prima facia case of TREASON.
It’s simply their view that those alive now have more “information” available to them and should not be bound by “archaic” restrictions on their superior decision making.
In their view, those who wrote the restrictions are inherently inferior in their judgement because they lived THEN - when there was less information than NOW.
I’m not agreeing with their assessment of contemporary superiority, just explaining it.
Amen. Let them solve their problems with their laws. There’s no utopia out there. No model worth copying but our own...
We don’t need to add their problems to our own. We have enough laws. We don’t need to start importing them.
And giving up our sovereingty to other courts should outright be called the treason it is.
The Supreme Court is garbage. They’ve made jurisprudence into a faux constitution. We need to get rid of it along with the Education and Commerce department waste of flesh.
How’s that for respect, Breyer a**hole?
So I get it, the 2nd Amendment means we can have guns as long as we don’t load them or have them in any area where they are likely to be needed.
America is one heartbeat away from oblivion. Lose one conservative on the SCOTUS, and are guns and freedoms are gone forever!
Put it in the time when the Constitution was written and he would be saying
Because you live in an area where there is likely to be an Indian attack, you shouldn't be armed to protect yourself.
It's statements like this that leads me to believe he's had a complete mental breakdown.
His staring into space when he speaks is also something that just doesn't sit right.
Wrong. It just means we would have to get personally involved in an actual blood and guts fight to keep them.
This con-man (not Constitutional man) should resign. How about 3 strikes against the Constitution and you're out for America's robed con-men?
Justice Stephen Breyer, you have the right to remain silent...
Wow! He's admitted that he doesn't care what the Constitution actually lays down in law but what he thinks are its intentions. Libs swoon over this guy.
I disagree. The first clause confuses the issue. Why couldn't it just say "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."? That would have been clear. The introductory clause needlessly clouds the meaning of the amendment.
Article 3 must have been written by crackheads. It needs to be rewritten.
I saw Breyer on the Charlie Rose show a week or so ago and he also advocates using foreign law. It was interesting for me to watch that interview as it gave me insight into Breyer. Several of you on this thread have hit the nail on the head. He basically thinks very highly of his own intellect and powers of reason to come to nearly whatever conclusion and judgment he wants. He chooses the outcome he desires, then uses sophistry and the web of law to justify it. He is not bound in his thinking by moral absolutes, or even legal ones as far as I can tell.
Funny thing about these legal “smart guys” is I usually suspect they don’t have as much raw brainpower as they seem to think they do. I bet he’d flunk out of the engineering school I attended. Anyways, it takes wisdom more than smarts to be a good judge, and he certainly doesn’t have that.
I disagree - it is confusing only when anti-gunners seek to disavow the rights enumerated by it. Especially in the context of the nature of the militia at the time of the Founders.
I think the 7th amendment is the only one that is clear. Most of the rest are clouded with ambiguity.
I agree with dirtboy. However you want to twist the 2nd amendment, there’s no way the founders meant the federal government has the power to prevent law-abiding citizens from keeping firearms in their own homes.
He thinks the US is a democracy? No wonder he is wrong so often.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.