Posted on 10/17/2005 3:43:34 PM PDT by RWR8189
And that a "right to privacy" exists in the Constitution...
Nothing more yet...
"I have my wading boots on up yo my shoulder blades with some of the sh-- you guys have been putting out."
I'd say you've managed to cover up your eyes and ears with them as well. Some people are comfortable with the ostrich approach. I'm not.
When we say that social circumstances have changed so as to require the evolution of doctrine to maintain the vigor of an existing principle we do not mean that society's values are perceived by the judge to have changed so that it would be good to have a new constitutional principle.
The difference is between protecting that privacy guaranteed by the fourth amendment-the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures"-and by requiring a warrant for government to listen electronically to what is said in the home and expanding that limited guarantee of privacy into a right not only to use contraceptives but to buy them, into a right to have an abortion, into a right, as four Justices of the Supreme Court would have it, to engage in homosexual conduct, into rights, as a number of professors would have it, to smoke marijuana and engage in prostitution.
If one cannot see where in that progression the adjustment of doctrine to protect an existing value ends and the creation of new values begins, then one should not aspire to be a judge or, for the matter of that, a law professor.
-Robert H. Bork
-The Tempting of America
Once you let the SCOTUS make themselves the arbiters of what is covered by privacy and what is not, you've lost the battle. Griswold was an issue that should have been left to the state. The SCOTUS usurped the rights of the State of Connecticut, and it's been down hill ever since.
There is a legitimate disagreement about whether the constitution covers a right to privacy in marriage.
Do you believe that the right to assisted suicide should also remain a state matter?
Whoe knows what it might entail in your perfervid dirty little mind. If you don't think that married couples have a fundamental right to privacy in their bedroom, then you have just thrown the entire conservative cause. If you are going to maintain this as a fundamental conservative principal, you are going to be standing alone in the public sqare, ridiculed by all, like Jesus #4 on Hyde Park Corner. You are going to make a laughing stoke of everything that conservatives hold dear.
Don't ever ever ever try to claim that the right of the state to pry into someone's private affairs is a conservative principle. Don't ever do it.
It is a real stretch, legally, logically, and morally to get from a right to privacy to a right to an abortion. Don't try to short-circuit the argument by stating that some dirty minded little bureaucrat or policeman has a right to go through my bed-linnen.
Not necessarily. Roberts supports Griswold, but put a fence around it in his testimony (see one of the early posts on this thread) such that he could legitimately overturn Roe v. Wade ("the arguments presented in favor of Griswold are applicable only to Griswold.")
Nor does it give people the right to commit sodomy in violation of state law.
As any principaled conservative would reply, "but that's different".
You misunderstand the sentence. A state must have some power before it passes a law, a power that gives it the right to pass the law. The states have the police power, and contract law is based on that power. It has nothing to do with religious belief, it has to do with the state constitutional power to pass laws.
Well who is the arbiter then? The right to be secure in one's house, etc. is clearly a right in the constitution, and therefore affords some standard of privacy? If the SC is not to enforce this clause then who does enforce it? If the SC does not enforce this ammendment, what other ammendments do they not enforce? If none, then what is the function of the SC, in your opinion?
"Nor does it give people the right to commit sodomy in violation of state law."
I disagree with you on that. Rights are really rights if the government can take them away .
What would Harriet say? Do you have an educated guess on that? Who gives a hoot what we think, what does SHE think?
No it isn't. Contract's are agreements between consenting parties. Criminal law is based on the police power of the state. Marriage exists independent of the power of the state and predates the power of the state. It is part of the English common law framework that was adopted wholesale by the original colonies and forms the foundation of the principles enshrined in the constitution. In fact, some were married outside of any state in the US? Are the not lawfully married?
Ask someone who had four wives in a polygamist country, then came with those wives to America.
The logical conclusion to your argument is that anything that happens in private is legal.
Obviously that's not the case. If murder is illegal even if it occurs in private. Then so is sodomy, if the state declares it illegal. There is no right to sodomy in the constitution.
How about we keep it simple and ask about someone with one wife who came to the US?
The current Bush is a Junior in every meaningful way - he's rolling down the same path as big-government Daddy, so let's not split hairs.
Griswold may be the case used for RvW, but that doesn't make Griswold wrong. It only makes it's application in RvW wrong and the SC can certainly rehear the case based on the latest scientific information. Contraception is before the fact, not after, so it is a bad case to base RvW on.
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