That is blatantly incorrect -- for if the Constitution is what the [majority of] the Supreme Court says, then any dissent listed is contrary to the Constitution, and any decision based on a prior dissent is therefore also contrary the Constitution. -- Furthermore, the if the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is, then any restrictions placed upon the Supreme Court by the Constitution are meaningless, precisely because the court says what the Constitution means.
Your statement advocates not a rule of law, but a rule of men.
Our Constitutions are the instruments of the people, not of the lawyers.
-- Joseph Story, Constitution (5th ed.) 345, SS 451. "... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is “boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem,” and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves. If the legislature fails to pass laws for a census, for paying the judges and other officers of government, for establishing a militia, for naturalization as prescribed by the Constitution, or if they fail to meet in congress, the judges cannot issue their mandamus to them ; if the President fails to supply the place of a judge, to appoint other civil or military officers, to issue requisite commissions, the judges cannot force him. They can issue their mandamus or distringas to no executive or legislative officer to enforce the fulfilment of their official duties, any more than the President or legislature may issue orders to the judges or their officers. Betrayed by English example, and unaware, as it should seem, of the control of our Constitution in this particular, they have at times overstepped their limit by undertaking to command executive officers in the discharge of their executive duties ; but the Constitution, in keeping three departments distinct and independent, restrains the authority of the judges to judiciary organs, as it does the executive and legislative to executive and legislative organs. The judges certainly have more frequent occasion to act on constitutional questions, because the laws of meum and tuum and of criminal action, forming the great mass of the system of law, constitute their particular department. When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Charles Jarvis "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." -- Thomas Jefferson, fair copy of the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 "If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws -- the first growing out of the last. ... A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government." -- Alexander Hamilton, Essay in the American Daily Advertiser, 1794 "We have received it [the Constitution] as the work of the assembled wisdom of the nation. We have trusted to it as to the sheet anchor of our safety in the stormy times of conflict with a foreign or domestic foe. We have looked to it with sacred awe as the palladium of our liberties, and with all the solemnities of religion have pledged to each other our lives and fortunes here and our hopes of happiness hereafter in its defense and support. Were we mistaken, my countrymen, in attaching this importance to the Constitution...? No. We were not mistaken. The letter of this great instrument is free from this radical fault...No, we did not err!...The sages...have given us a practical and, as they hoped, a permanent Constitutional compact...The Constitution is still the object of our reverence, the bond of our Union, our defense in danger, the source of our prosperity in peace: it shall descend, as we have received it, uncorrupted by sophistical construction, to our posterity..." -- President Andrew Jackson, Proclamation of December 10, 1832 "We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution." -- Abraham Lincoln"Every word employed in the Constitution is to be expounded in its plain, obvious, and common sense, unless the context furnishes some ground to control, qualify, or enlarge it. Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of philosophical acuteness or judicial research. They are instruments of a practical nature, rounded on the common business of human life, adapted to common wants, designed for common use, and fitted for common understandings. The people make them, the people adopt them, the people must be supposed to read them, with the help of common-sense, and cannot be presumed to admit in them any recondite meaning or any extraordinary gloss."
“That is blatantly incorrect — for if the Constitution is what the [majority of] the Supreme Court says, then any dissent listed is contrary to the Constitution, and any decision based on a prior dissent is therefore also contrary the Constitution. — Furthermore, the if the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is, then any restrictions placed upon the Supreme Court by the Constitution are meaningless, precisely because the court says what the Constitution means.”
It sounds like you are saying that it is NOT the Supreme Court’s job to decide which laws are constitutional and which are not. Its hard to take that argument seriously since for the last 100 years that is exactly what they have been doing. Like it or not they do it based on precident and on how they interpret it’s meaning. If that is not their role, what is? Some of their recent decisions seem to ignore the obvious meaning such as McCain Feingold, or the Healthcare law. So despite how you think the court should act, we have to deal with he reality.
“Your statement advocates not a rule of law, but a rule of men.”
I didn’t advocate any such d@mn thing, I’m just saying that given the opportunity Obama will pack the court with justices who like him, who don’t give a d@mn what the constitution says.