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Was It All for This? The Failure of the Conservative Legal Movement
Public Discourse ^ | June 16, 2020 | Se, Josh Hawley

Posted on 06/17/2020 6:23:51 AM PDT by Lurking Libertarian

This decision, and the majority who wrote it, represents the end of something. It represents the end of the conservative legal movement, or the conservative legal project, as we know it. After Bostock, that effort, as it has existed up to now, is over. I say this because if textualism and originalism give you this decision, if you can invoke textualism and originalism in order to reach such a decision—an outcome that fundamentally changes the scope and meaning and application of statutory law—then textualism and originalism and all of those phrases don’t mean much at all.

And if those are the things that we’ve been fighting for—it’s what I thought we had been fighting for, those of us who call ourselves legal conservatives—if we’ve been fighting for originalism and textualism, and this is the result of that, then I have to say it turns out we haven’t been fighting for very much.

Or maybe we’ve been fighting for quite a lot, but it’s been exactly the opposite of what we thought we were fighting for.

Now, this is a very significant decision and it marks a turning point for every conservative. And it marks a turning point for the legal conservative movement.

(Excerpt) Read more at thepublicdiscourse.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: originalism; scotus; textualism
This is a reprint of a speech by Sen. Hawley in the Senate yesterday, about the Supreme Court's gay/transgender decision in Bostock. This is just an excerpt, but the whole speech is worth reading.
1 posted on 06/17/2020 6:23:51 AM PDT by Lurking Libertarian
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To: Lurking Libertarian

Mark Levin pretty much said the same thing on his show on Monday. The idea that we’re going to turn the tide by getting better/more “conservative” judges appointed is a fallacy. Our only option now is to amend the Constitution to rein-in the power of the courts.

That’s a tall order but I think this decision has convinced me he’s right about that.


2 posted on 06/17/2020 6:28:05 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog (Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer)
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To: Lurking Libertarian

Hawley says the right words, but I don’t trust him.

There is a man behind the curtain somewhere pulling his strings.


3 posted on 06/17/2020 6:28:44 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Who could have guessed the Communist Revolution would arrive disguised as the common cold?)
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To: Buckeye McFrog

It’s obvious that our only option short of waiting for Jesus’s return is war.


4 posted on 06/17/2020 6:30:01 AM PDT by HighSierra5
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To: Lurking Libertarian

Gorsuch went from Catholic to Episcopalian.
Go figure!

—Episcopalian rejects all sexual morality from the Bible


5 posted on 06/17/2020 6:36:22 AM PDT by RBStealth (-- raised by wolves, educated by nuns)
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To: HighSierra5

It’s obvious that our only option short of waiting for Jesus’s return is war.

___________________________________________________

Yes, because there is no way we’re amending the Constitution with the country as divided as it is now. And even if we do amend it, the very words of our amendment can be “re-interpreted” by these lowlifes on the Court.


6 posted on 06/17/2020 6:36:24 AM PDT by Bishop_Malachi (Liberal Socialism - A philosophy which advocates spreading a low standard of living equally.)
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To: Buckeye McFrog
Forget about amending the Constitution, either.

The application of "civil rights" laws to private industry has no place in constitutional law -- and yet that never stopped anyone from establishing an EEOC and imposing government mandates on businesses across this country.

In my business, I have ZERO employees other than family members -- and most of my work is done by contractors, not employees.

You don't live in a free country if you have to post sh!t like this in your place of business:


7 posted on 06/17/2020 6:40:55 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("We're human beings ... we're not f#%&ing animals." -- Dennis Rodman, 6/1/2020)
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To: Lurking Libertarian
Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) was the landmark that threw out originalism, unless you want to argue that those who passed the 14th Amendment really want to grant the legal benefits and protections of marriage to two men or two women. The recent decision relies on that just like all the abortion decisions refer to Roe vs. Wade.
8 posted on 06/17/2020 6:42:05 AM PDT by Dr. Sivana (There is no salvation in politics)
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To: Lurking Libertarian

Fantastic. The bargain made is a bad one. I am not a ‘religious conservative’ so to speak, but I do believe in the US Constitution and its framework by which we agreed to be governed. Our representatives have failed us totally.


9 posted on 06/17/2020 6:42:40 AM PDT by griswold3 (Democratic Socialism is Slavery by Mob Rule)
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To: Buckeye McFrog
Our only option now is to amend the Constitution to rein-in the power of the courts

I don't see that as much of an option. It's not like RBG and three others give a rats-ass as to what the Constitution says. And one said she prefers the Chinese constitution to ours.

10 posted on 06/17/2020 6:45:10 AM PDT by libertylover (Socialism will always look good to those who think they can get something for nothing.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Is there anyone you do trust? Hawley has been, as far as I can see, consistent in his conservatism. It’s refreshing to hear a young, energetic conservative standing up for our values. God knows we need more like him right now. At least he isn’t cowering in the tall grass with the rest of his fellow Republican senators.


11 posted on 06/17/2020 6:45:43 AM PDT by Russ (I)
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To: Lurking Libertarian

I don’t know how anyone can look at the last 30 years of so-called conservative jurisprudence and fail to realize that what the GOP actually cares about is enshrining corporate power. Social conservatism is a very distant second to getting judges seated who are willing to fight tooth and nail for GOP donors’ business interests. They’re not even very subtle about it.


12 posted on 06/17/2020 6:56:25 AM PDT by Zeroisanumber1
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To: Lurking Libertarian

When the Congress wrote the Civil Rights Act, they wrote sex, meaning male and female, basic human biology.

The idiots in black robes have redefined sex to mean whatever perversion is practiced.

Not that we still have a Constitution anyway.

They ignored that Obama is not a natural born citizen.

Not ONE of our elected OR appointed stood for the Constitution and BOTH parties abrogated it on Usurpation Day.


13 posted on 06/17/2020 7:02:38 AM PDT by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizens Are Born Here of Citizen Parents|Know Islam, No Peace-No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: Buckeye McFrog

Better judges is a project for people who are patient and in this for the long haul. Leftists began to infiltrate the judiciary long before they were getting any push-back of any kind. I remember when state level Republicans yawned-off judicial appointments. We’ve gotten some good appointments, but we’re just learning to fight, whereas the left has been at this ever since the late 1800’s.


14 posted on 06/17/2020 7:04:57 AM PDT by Socon-Econ (adical Islam,)
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To: Lurking Libertarian

If anyone is not quite sure what to think, consider this:

“The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted it means now. Those things which are within its grants of power, as those grants were understood when made, are still within them, and those things not within them still excluded . . . As long as it continues to exist in its present form, it speaks no only in the same words, but with the same meaning and intent with which it spoke when it came from the hands of its framers, and was voted on and adopted by the people of the United States.” - Justice David Brewer (South Carolina v. United States)


15 posted on 06/17/2020 7:10:23 AM PDT by jeffersondem
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To: Russ

He came from nowhere, just like Obama.


16 posted on 06/17/2020 7:39:50 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Who could have guessed the Communist Revolution would arrive disguised as the common cold?)
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To: Lurking Libertarian

This presumption is wrong:

“I say this because if textualism and originalism give you this decision,”

But it was not a “textualism and originalism give you this decision”. It was an abandonment of textualism and originalism.

As the WSJ put it, succinctly, it was Gorsuch vs. Gorsuch.
It was Gorsuch betraying his own prior case arguments.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gorsuch-vs-gorsuch-11592350714?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

“Gorsuch vs. Gorsuch
An alien legal being seems to have captured the Justice.”

An alien appears to have occupied the body of Justice Neil Gorsuch as he wrote Monday’s opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, which sometimes happens when Justices breathe the rarified air of the Supreme Court building. But perhaps he’ll snap out of his living Constitution trance if he’s shown his own previous work.

In Bostock, Justice Gorsuch updated the meaning of “sex” in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sexual orientation and gender identity. But in 2018 in Wisconsin Central Ltd. v. U.S., the Justice decried this approach to judging:

“Written laws are meant to be understood and lived by. If a fog of uncertainty surrounded them, if their meaning could shift with the latest judicial whim, the point of reducing them to writing would be lost. That is why it’s a ‘fundamental canon of statutory construction’ that words generally should be ‘interpreted as taking their ordinary, contemporary, common meaning . . . at the time Congress enacted the statute.’”

And don’t forget New Prime, Inc. v. Oliveira in 2019 where he quoted himself: “‘[I]t’s a ‘fundamental canon of statutory construction’ that words generally should be ‘interpreted as taking their ordinary . . . meaning . . . at the time Congress enacted the statute.’” He added: “After all, if judges could freely invest old statutory terms with new meanings, we would risk amending legislation outside the ‘single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered, procedure’ the Constitution commands.”

“Yes we would, and nicely put. So what happened in Bostock?”

“One answer, we suppose, is that the other cases were obscure while Bostock was politically charged. But it’s in these high-profile cases that a Justice makes his reputation for standing on legal principle—or not. We still prefer the alien explanation, and we’re available for a legal exorcism upon request.”

The issue is not that textualism and originalism are dead and will now be ignored. They were not even deployed in the Gorsuch decision.

The issue is how did a Gorsuch get past OUR gate keepers, so we can choose better in the days ahead.

Or did Gorsuch get seduced by Kagan or Sotomayor and is now being blackmailed???? /sarc


17 posted on 06/17/2020 8:35:49 AM PDT by Wuli (Get)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Hawley says the right words, but I don’t trust him.

There is a man behind the curtain somewhere pulling his strings.


Yeah, I’d trust Hawley a lot more if he wasn’t a U. S. Senator. Look how fast Mike Lee flipped to the dark side. Hawley must directly engage the corrupt beltway donor class to rise above the beltway sewer scum.


18 posted on 06/17/2020 9:50:04 AM PDT by lodi90
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To: lodi90

He came from out of nowhere. That’s never good.


19 posted on 06/17/2020 10:12:52 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Who could have guessed the Communist Revolution would arrive disguised as the common cold?)
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To: Bishop_Malachi

“Yes, because there is no way we’re amending the Constitution with the country as divided as it is now. And even if we do amend it, the very words of our amendment can be “re-interpreted” by these lowlifes on the Court.”

________

That why efforts should be focused on repeal of the 17th Amendment. It’s the one amendment that couldn’t be cheated.


20 posted on 07/03/2020 2:22:26 PM PDT by Ken H (Best SOTU ever!)
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