Posted on 06/27/2003 6:59:53 AM PDT by bedolido
I wasn't the least bit surprised by the Supreme Court's split decisions to allow the University of Michigan to continue legally discriminating against whites for admission to its law school while barring the school from doing so for undergraduate admissions.
I'm not sure why anyone else (especially those who fashion themselves as Court watchers) should be either. Long ago I came to the realization that the Supreme Court — like most of our nation's courts — has very little respect for the U.S. Constitution or the values, principles and will of the American people as expressed by many of the laws passed by their elected representatives.
In fact, the High Court seems to be openly contemptuous of our nation's founding and organizing document and legislative processes. It long ago stopped being deserving of our awe and respect. It's become an entity unto itself. Let's face it and call it what it is — a kangaroo court
How else can you explain the Court's seemingly magical ability over the years to conjures up things in the Constitution that clearly aren't there while wishing away things that are. Where for instance does the Constitution guarantee the right to an abortion? Or that American children can be forcibly bused to a school miles away from the neighborhood school around the block against their parents' wishes?
I've read the Constitution and I still don't see where the Court found its justification for ruling prayer in school unconstitutional. I'm reading it right this very minute as I write this article and the Constitution clearly states in the First Amendment that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
That doesn't appear to bar prayer in school to me, unless our nation's local school districts some how have become a branch of Congress without anyone being told about it.
For that matter, where in the Constitution does it give the federal government the power to extract confiscatory taxes from its citizens in order to fund Social Security, Medicare, the Drug Enforcement Agency, farm subsidies and a myriad of other social engineering schemes, initiatives and welfare programs?
Because if that power is there, I can't find it. And I certainly don't remember voting for any of that stuff.
As for things that are there but the court is amazingly myopic on, the best case in point is the Second Amendment. The Court has been all over the map on the Second Amendment, which, based on my readings of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and writings of our Founding Founders, I and millions of other Americans correctly believe give us the right to own firearms.
I'm not a constitutional scholar nor have I spent even a second in law school, but the words "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" sound mighty definitive to me.
But the nature of a kangeroo court is its ability to find wiggle room in any legal document, no matter how definitive or constitutionally binding.
As for the University of Michigan's dual policies on admission, the best that can be said is that even the Supreme Court couldn't find the wiggle room in the undergraduate admission policy, which gave more weight to an applicant's skin color than their SAT scores. I guess that's a kind of victory for those of us who still believe strongly in the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
Although I said the decision did not catch me by surprise, I was struck by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's thinking for siding with the law school admission policy when she wrote in the majority opinion: "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."
I was stuck by those words because it's an out-and-out admission by Justice O'Connor that she and the majority of the Court in its decision believe that somewhere in the Constitution that it sanctions legalized racism.
That's astounding.
They can dress it up anyway they like, but Justice Clarence Thomas called the decision exactly what it is in his dissenting opinion when he wrote that waiting for a quarter century to end affirmative action is "a 25-year license to violate the Constitution."
Look, I've read the Constitution too and I don't see the word "school" (i.e. government school) in it at all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.