Posted on 11/23/2010 3:58:06 PM PST by wagglebee
RICHMOND, Virginia, November 23, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia slammed the modern U.S. judiciary and the high court for using the idea of a “living constitution” to invent new rules and meanings that have led to a “right” to abortion and decriminalized homosexual conduct.
Scalia made his remarks last Friday during a University of Richmond luncheon lecture entitled “Do Words Matter?” The event was covered both by the Associated Press.
“The Constitution says what it says and it doesn’t say anything more,” said Scalia to an audience of 250 people, most of them legal professionals and academics.
The 74-year-old jurist, appointed to the high court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, warned that government by judges is inevitable when the original meaning of legal language in laws and constitutions is not respected. This attitude, he said, allows “five out of nine hotshot lawyers to run the country.”
“Under the guise of interpreting the Constitution and under the banner of a living Constitution, judges, especially those on the Supreme Court, now wield an enormous amount of political power,” continued Scalia, “because they don’t just apply the rules that have been written, they create new rules.”
Scalia pointed out that the high court distorted the meaning of “due process” (referring to legal procedure) in the 14th Amendment to invent new rights under a “made up” concept of “substantial due process.” That has allowed the 14th Amendment to become the gateway to legal abortion and other behaviors, which the constitutional authors never intended and viewed as criminal.
“The due process clause has been distorted so it’s no longer a guarantee of process but a guarantee of liberty,” Scalia expounded. “But some of the liberties the Supreme Court has found to be protected by that word - liberty - nobody thought constituted a liberty when the 14th Amendment was adopted. Homosexual sodomy? It was criminal in all the states. Abortion? It was criminal in all the states.”
He also commented on the modern confirmation process of Supreme Court justices, saying it was akin to a “mini-constitutional convention” because Senators are fighting about how a justice will interpret words.
“The way to change the Constitution is through amendments approved by the people, not by judges altering the meaning of its words,” he added.
The AP reports that after the lecture, Scalia signed copies of his new book, “Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges,” and was going to lecture a class on the constitution’s separation of powers at UR’s law school.
Justice Scalia, along with Justice Clarence Thomas, are the high court’s two jurists that firmly embrace an “originalist” doctrine - abiding by the original intent and context of legal language - when it comes to interpreting the U.S. Constitution and federal laws.
Scalia has criticized the high court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision as an “improper” ruling, saying the founding charter of the U.S. federal government had nothing to do either with abortion or even things like homosexual activity.
If the U.S. Supreme Court reversed its position on Roe, abortion would once again become a criminal matter for the states to decide how to regulate or prohibit.
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Long life and excellent health for Justice Scalia, I so pray!
One can not have the pursuit of happiness without life. If we do not protect life all else is a sham ! One can not have liberty without life.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
It has been distorted, but it's supposed to mean more than that courts followed the rules laid out by legislators. The rules themselves have to meet certain requirements. For example, the prohibition against depriving people of life, liberty, or property, without due process cannot legitimately be overcome by a legislature passing a statute allowing a cop's declaration that he wants something is sufficient to meet the "due process" burden for confiscating someone's property.
Unfortunately, the Court seems to ignore real violations of rights at the same time as it protects "rights" of its own invention.
Before it does, just be happy the court is not composed entirely of lawyers from the ACLU, Ginsburg or the twin twits, Sotomayor and Kagan.
Yes, and he’s 74. It’s a concern, but I thank God that he is there.
Amen.
This is one courageous man. I fear the wrath of hell will be coming down on him for these remarks. You watch as the impeachment talks surface.
Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right. Shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision, Professor John Hart Ely, now Dean of Stanford Law School, wrote that the opinion "is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be." Nowhere do the plain words of the Constitution even hint at a "right" so sweeping as to permit abortion up to the time the child is ready to be born. Yet that is what the Court ruled.
As an act of "raw judicial power" (to use Justice White's biting phrase), the decision by the seven-man majority in Roe v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court's decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v. Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation.
President Ronald Reagan, 1983
I love that! Me too!
BUMP !!
In my opinion, the Left twisted the meaning of the word when they used the term “Living” constitution.
We are the ones who believe that the constitution is still the fundamental law of the land, and that it still means what it says it means, and that it still says what the writers meant for it to say. We are the ones who believe it is alive.
The Left doesn’t believe in constitutions. For them the constitution is dead, its a relic that they wave whenever they want to lend additional superstitious solemnity to whatever is their opinion of the moment. To cover up their belief that the constitution is dead they refer to it as “living” but as a relevant document it is as dead as a doornail.
Even in something so simple as this the Left hides behind words that they invert to mean the opposite of what they in fact mean.
I think he's just trying to be intellectually consistent. Abortion is NOT a social issue that was addressed by the Founders in the Constitution. So, what does that mean. It means that, in Scalia's opinion, it should be something that is addressed, if it's addressed at all, in the legislature, and specifically in the state legislature.
Just like he doesn't find any guarantee of abortion in the Constitution, he also doesn't find any guarantee from abortion.
Scalia wants complicated, contentious social issues decided in the place that the Framers wanted them decided - the Legislative Branch. I think on balance, this is the right approach.
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that because our understanding of science is so much further advanced today than it was in 1776, legal doctrine shouldn't reflect the scientific realities of a modern society. It's tough to look at a 3D ultrasound and then argue that's not a person, endowed with same inalienable rights as anyone else. I'm not saying - and I bet Scalia wouldn't either - that argument is wholly without merit. But, because of the contentiousness of the issue, he'd still rather give deference to the legislature.
All things considered, the country would be much better off, and these kinds of issues would be much less divisive - strangely - if we did just that.
Someone who believes the Constitution is "living" must also believe that it will eventually die.
Yes, I believe that the word "posterity" in the Preamble indicates that the Founding Fathers believed that those not yet born were to enjoy full constitutional rights.
Just like he doesn't find any guarantee of abortion in the Constitution, he also doesn't find any guarantee from abortion.
Yet he must certainly believe that the Constitution TWICE FORBIDS the legal taking of life without due process.
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that because our understanding of science is so much further advanced today than it was in 1776, legal doctrine shouldn't reflect the scientific realities of a modern society. It's tough to look at a 3D ultrasound and then argue that's not a person, endowed with same inalienable rights as anyone else. I'm not saying - and I bet Scalia wouldn't either - that argument is wholly without merit. But, because of the contentiousness of the issue, he'd still rather give deference to the legislature.
Advances in modern medicine aside, ALL of the Founding Fathers would have accepted Jeremiah 1:5 as proof of personhood.
The unfortunate reality of leaving it to the legislatures would mean that leftist states would leave abortion legal and the fact of the matter is that these states are where the huge majority of abortions are performed.
Katie Couric, that disgusting excuse for modern feminism, will show hew colonoscopy on TV but they would never show a late-term abortion since cleaning out one’s colon is much more acceptable than cleaning out one’s social life.
Caution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15JsYSZIT-Q
Sick leftist. It’s the reason Metallica sang Harvester of Sorrow.
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