Posted on 01/09/2006 8:26:54 AM PST by PatrickHenry
If there’s anything to be learned from the intelligent design debate, it’s that branding “activist judges” is the hobby of bitter losers.
For those who care about the fight over evolution in biology classrooms, Christmas came five days early when the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ruling was handed down. In his decision, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that not only is the theory of intelligent design religion poorly dressed in science language, teaching it in class is an outright violation of the First Amendment.
The ruling was a concise and devastating demonstration of how law, precedent and evidence can come together to drive complete nonsense out of the courtroom. But if the aftermath of the event proves anything, it proves that nine times out of 10, if someone accuses a judge of being an “activist,” it is because he disagrees with the ruling and wants to make it clear to like-minded followers that they only lost because the liberals are keeping them down. Gratuitous overuse has, in just a few short years, turned the phrase “judicial activism” from a description of an actual problem in the legal system into a catch-all keyword for any ruling that social conservatives dislike.
During the months between the initial suit and the final decision, a high-powered law firm from Chicago volunteered some of its best to represent the plaintiffs pro bono, defenders of evolution and intelligent design mobilized, and few people really cared other than court watchers, biology nerds and a suspicious number of creationist groups. The trial went well for the plaintiffs: Their witnesses and evidence were presented expertly and professionally, and it never hurts when at least two of the witnesses for the defense are caught perjuring themselves in their depositions. Advocates for teaching actual science in school science classes were fairly confident that Jones was going to rule in their favor.
When it came, the ruling was significant enough to earn a slightly wider audience than the aforementioned court watchers, biology nerds and creationists. What drew interest from newcomers was not the minutiae of the trial, but the scope of Jones’ ruling and the scorn for the Dover School Board’s actions that practically radiated off the pages. He ruled both that intelligent design was a religious idea, and that teaching it in a science class was an unconstitutional establishment of religion by the state. He didn’t stop there, however.
“It is ironic,” he wrote, “that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the intelligent design policy.”
Such harsh language might provoke some sympathy for intelligent design advocates, if they hadn’t immediately demonstrated how much they deserved it by responding — not with scientific arguments for intelligent design or legal precedent to contradict Jones’ ruling — but with ridiculous name-calling. The Discovery Institute, the leading center of ID advocacy, referred to Jones as “an activist judge with delusions of grandeur.” Bill O’Reilly also brought out the “A” word on his show. Richard Land, spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and noted drama queen, declared him the poster child for “a half-century secularist reign of terror.” The American Family Association, having apparently read a different ruling than the rest of America, insisted that judges were so eager to keep God out of schools that they would throw out even scientific evidence for Him. Funny how so many creationist groups seemed to have missed the memo that intelligent design isn’t supposed to be about God at all.
It was depressingly predictable that the intelligent design crowd would saturate the Internet with cries of judicial activism regardless of the actual legal soundness of the ruling. In only a few years, intellectually lazy political leaders have morphed an honest problem in the judiciary that deserves serious debate into shorthand for social conservatism’s flavor of the week. The phrase has been spread around so much and applied to so many people that it only has meaning within the context of someone’s rant. It is the politico-speak equivalent of “dude.”
Only when one learns that Jones was appointed by George W. Bush and had conservative backers that included the likes of Tom Ridge and Rick Santorum can one appreciate how indiscriminately the term is thrown around. Jones is demonstrably a judicial conservative. In fact, he’s the kind of strict constructionist that social conservatives claim to want on the bench. Their mistake is in assuming that the law and their ideology must necessarily be the same thing.
In the end, no one could defend Jones better than he did himself. He saw the breathless accusations of judicial activism coming a mile away, and refuted them within the text of the ruling. In his conclusion he wrote:
“Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on intelligent design, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop, which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”
Jones knew his name would be dragged through the mud and issued the correct ruling anyway. One can only hope that the utter childishness of the intelligent design response will alienate even more sensible people, and that the phrase “judicial activism” will from now on be used only by those who know what they’re talking about. No bets on the latter.
One wonders if we should apply your standard to the field of archaeology:
"Look! I've found clay tablets containing the writings of an advanced pre-Sumerian culture!""Don't be silly; there's no evidence of an advanced pre-Sumerian culture!"
"It's right here, in the tablets. What, did you think these writing marks made themselves?"
"Look, first you have to produce evidence of an advanced pre-Sumerian culture--then maybe we'll consider whether your tablets might have been written by them."
"The tablets are the evidence!"
"That's just circular reasoning! You have to come up with independent evidence of this advanced pre-Sumerian culture first, or you're just employing a culture-of-the-gaps approach."
"Okay, so what about these cuneform tablets from the early Babyonian period that attest to this pre-Sumerian culture? They're called the Iddites."
"Oh, that's just ancient legend! You can't take those seriously. Everyone knows that the Iddites are just a myth. Besides, just because you're an Iddite-enthusiast, you think everything points to them. Why couldn't it be Berkley's Creaites or Smith's Desites?"
"It could; I'm not saying on the basis of the evidence thus far that this tablet had to come from the Iddites, though I tend to favor that hypothesis of course. But the fact is that it shows evidence of design--"
"What evidence? I just see a bunch of scratches."
"You think that a scratch that looks like a cat happened in five separate places on this tablet by accident?"
"It could have. Given enough time, anything is possible."
"That's not true, and even if it were, the far more likely explanation is that this tablet was carved by an intellegent being."
"Not if no such being exists."
"Okay, but why should we believe that he doesn't when we're both standing here looking at his handiwork?"
"Oh, no, no, no. Nice try, but you can't get me to try to prove a negative. You have to prove that this Iddite or Creaite or Desite or whatever exists first, then we can discuss whether he or she wrote this tablet. Sheesh, you don't know anything about how science works, do you?"
The Civil Rights Act of 1871 was enacted by Congress because some of the states were ignoring the requirements of the 14th Amendment. It did not have anything directly to do with the 15th Amendment.
The Civil Right act of 1871, now codified as Title 18 US code 241/241 for criminal purposes and 42 US code 1981-1988 for civil remedies, is the enforcement mechanism by which citizens of states can seek relief from violations of the 14th Amendment. It's a bit more complicated than that, but this is a good general explanation.
But not always? So it's open to interpretation?
We can easily tell with late model phyla. Early model phyla that have been extinct for a very long time can be out of effective reach of this backvectoring I've described for reconstructing extinct ancestral genome. Much like how we can use parallax to determine the distance of a few stars close to us, but it's useless for far away stars.
The problem was many states weren't protecting the right's of its citizens.
And there are far too many conservatives who apparently think that's okay, that Constitutional protections don't apply to the states.
But then, I digress. If "no one responds" to my posts as you say, then why did you respond to all of them at once? You're not saying you're a nobody, are you?
who designed the designerNo problem at all.
Something has to have been eternal. We can choose to accept that ZERO is eternal or that SOMETHING is eternal.
But if we have ZERO being eternal, then we must accept that ZERO can give rise to something.
"Something has to have been eternal. "
Only problem with that is that proving something is 'eternal' is an impossibility.
Do you have an actual honest argument, or just a bunch of incoherent, paranoid rambling?
Then how do you explain the existance of poodles? Have you ever seen a wolf give birth to a poodle? What would be the chances of a male poodle and a female poodle coming into existance at the same time and then mating? You didn't address this important question.
And none of ths even addresses the problem evolution has explaining how one classification of life can be transformed into another classification.
Like a wolf into a poodle for example. A HUGE increase in information required there and against huge odds. So far I don't see you giving any sort of answers of how that could have happened.
That's true. It's called leaving things to the legislative branch, which we used to do before the judicial oligarchy arose.
(From post #222) "Because the 1866 Civil Rights Act was a statute and thus could be repealed. Putting something in the Constitution makes things more permanent."
So which is it? Did they want it to be easy for them to twist it to their future spurious desires, or did they want to grant permanence to it?
#####Implanting the verbiage of 1866 Civil Rights Act into the 14th Amendment would have.#####
It would have implanted that particular verbiage, but Congress obviously wanted the latitude for itself to make adjustments as needed.
how...unconstitutional of them. Not to mention it wasn't used that way. Otherwise why have additional amendments addressing civil rights? Why weren't they just tacked on to the precious statute you say contains the true overview of the 14th Amendment?
#####Further, are you saying that they intended the 14th to be a 'back door' through which they could jam any old statue they pleased without requiring it to go through the amendment process? And you support this idea? And question my conservative nature?#####
Not just any old statute they pleased. It would have to be germane to the provisions of the 14th Amendment we've been discussing. Read the 14th. It says:
>>>>>The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.<<<<<
You may notice that Congress passed a lot of such legislation in that era to protect the privileges & immunities of, and to guarantee due process to, the freed slaves. They didn't pass a single piece of legislation to, for example, ban Bible readings in state schools, or remove crosses from city seals, etc. Obviously such legislation never crossed their mind under the 14th Amendment.
That enforcement clause grants Congress the power to enforce the amendment, not change its provisions. I seriously am beginning to think you have a very liberal idea of how much this amendment can be stretched without bothering to actually amend the Constitution. On the other hand, if you are simply saying that this was meant to encompass all current and future 'privileges or immunities' granted by the legislative body, then I don't see how you think that excludes some of them.
#####You are saying that announcing that the proposed amendment would explicitly extend enforcement of the Bill of Rights to include the states during the actual consideration of the amendment wouldn't have clued them in that it might cover the 1st Amendment?#####
Context, man, context! :-)
Bingham's statement needs to be considered in context. Read the section on the Doctrine of Incorporation in the link I provided to get an understanding of what Bingham meant.
I have read the article you linked. It appears to have done its own share of quote-mining for its own slanted purposes without citing sources that establish context itself.
Well, there's that pesky 10th Amendment....
Don't know much about biology, but I learn more and more everyday thanks to you fellas.
Now, I do know something about logic and fallacious reasoning, so I can still keep score....
Evo: 121,664,789
Creo: 0
True, but there's also the Ninth. Which recognizes that we have more rights than the ones listed.
And the 10th does not say that the states may infringe upon Constitutional rights.
True, but there's also the Ninth. Which recognizes that we have more rights than the ones listed.
And the 10th does not say that the states may infringe upon Constitutional rights.
IMHO, we killed them off.
No amount of evidence is enough to convince someone determined NOT to believe in something that that thing exists.
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