[Alberta's Child]

See Post #19. The origin of the law isn't relevant; I only included the background to explain why Minnesota has a property abandonment statute on its books that is different than what you might find in most other states.

Your post does touch on an important distinction between two different types of "conservative" judges: originalists and textualists.

An originalist like Antonin Scalia would look at this case and apply this question as part of his legal approach: "How would the authors of the U.S. Constitution apply the original founding principles of this nation to the case?"

A textualist like Clarence Thomas would apply this question: "I'm not going to try to decipher what the authors of the U.S. Constitution would have thought about this case. What did the plain language of the applicable statute and/or Constitutional provision mean when it was drafted?"

At some point the plaintiff in a case has to be seen as an incompetent misfit who had every chance in the world to remedy a situation amicably under the letter of the law but refused to do so.

[Gaffer]

One would hope when you are 94 and ‘incompetent’ you feel differently.