[cogitator]

As anyone who's read any of his opinions on the Court knows, Justice Scalia has only one choice: obey the Constitution wherever it leads. Dionne, and his newspaper, and his dinner party set, and his brain dead political party, do not want "their country" defined by the Constitution.

I wonder how many people in this country have considered or thought about what this country would be like had the Supreme Court -- throughout its entire history -- hewn to strict interpretation of the Constitution. It'd sure be different than what we see now, I'm sure.

It'd be an interesting exercise in alternate history to identify 10 or 20 salient 5-4 decisions, "reverse" them, and then extrapolate the changes in history that would follow. Not something I could do, but a political scientist/historian??

[Congressman Billybob]

You raise a very interesting point. Like a recent book by Newt Gingrich and Bill Forstchen, you posit one change and then write the alternative history that would have resulted. I'll raise that very subject with Bill, tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks,

John / Billybob

[Alas Babylon!]

Here's one: Dred Scott wins his right to be free.

How would that effect the position of Slave owners that their Negroes were property worth fighting for? If an escaped slave made it to a free state, he'd be legally free. Would John Brown still have gone to Harper's Ferry? IMHO, the Scott decision locked the inevitability of the Civil War into place. By confirming the a black man was and always would be property no matter where he lived and how his neighbors treated him, the need for radical abolitionists to preach violence and revolution to blacks was set, and even if they didn't, for Southerners to worry that they would.

Then again, the decision to declare Scott a free man could have accelerated the Succession by a couple of years.