Posted on 07/07/2003 7:00:07 AM PDT by mrobison
LAW OF THE LAND
Justice: Can Constitution make it in global age?
On TV, Breyer wonders whether it will 'fit into governing documents of other nations'
Posted: July 7, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
In a rare appearance on a television news show, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer questioned whether the U.S. Constitution, the oldest governing document in use in the world today, will continue to be relevant in an age of globalism.
Speaking with ABC News' "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos and his colleague Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Breyer took issue with Justice Antonin Scalia, who, in a dissent in last month's Texas sodomy ruling, contended the views of foreign jurists are irrelevant under the U.S. Constitution.
Breyer had held that a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that homosexuals had a fundamental right to privacy in their sexual behavior showed that the Supreme Court's earlier decision to the contrary was unfounded in the Western tradition.
"We see all the time, Justice O'Connor and I, and the others, how the world really – it's trite but it's true – is growing together," Breyer said. "Through commerce, through globalization, through the spread of democratic institutions, through immigration to America, it's becoming more and more one world of many different kinds of people. And how they're going to live together across the world will be the challenge, and whether our Constitution and how it fits into the governing documents of other nations, I think will be a challenge for the next generations."
In the Lawrence v Texas case decided June 26, Justice Anthony Kennedy gave as a reason for overturning a Supreme Court ruling of 17 years earlier upholding sodomy laws that it was devoid of any reliance on the views of a "wider civilization."
Scalia answered in his dissent: "The court's discussion of these foreign views (ignoring, of course, the many countries that have retained criminal prohibitions on sodomy) is ... meaningless dicta. Dangerous dicta, however, since this court ... should not impose foreign moods, fads, or fashions on Americans," he said quoting the 2002 Foster v. Florida case.
Scalia's scathing critique of the 6-3 sodomy ruling was unusual in its bluntness.
"Today's opinion is the product of a court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct," he wrote. Later he concluded: "This court has taken sides in the culture war."
Both O'Connor and Breyer sought to downplay antipathy between the justices – no matter how contentious matters before the court become. O'Connor said justices don't take harsh criticisms personally.
"When you work in a small group of that size, you have to get along, and so you're not going to let some harsh language, some dissenting opinion, affect a personal relationship," she said. "You can't do that."
Breyer agreed.
"So if I'm really put out by something, I can go to the person who wrote it and say, 'Look, I think you've gone too far here.'"
O'Connor, too, seemed to suggest in the ABC interview that the Constitution was far from the final word in governing America. Asked if there might come a day when it would no longer be the last word on the law, she said: "Well, you always have the power of entering into treaties with other nations which also become part of the law of the land, but I can't see the day when we won't have a constitution in our nation."
Asked to explain what he meant when he said judges who favor a very strict literal interpretation of the Constitution can't justify their practices by claiming that's what the framers wanted, Breyer responded: "I meant that the extent to which the Constitution is flexible is a function of what provisions you're talking about. When you look at the word 'two' for two representatives from every state in the United States Senate, two means two. But when you look like a word – look at a word like 'interstate commerce,' which they didn't have automobiles in mind, or they didn't have airplanes in mind, or telephones, or the Internet, or you look at a word like 'liberty,' and they didn't have in mind at that time the problems of privacy brought about, for example, by the Internet and computers. You realize that the framers intended those words to maintain constant values, but values that would change in their application as society changed."
In an unrelated matter, O'Connor indicated on "This Week" that she would likely serve out the next term on the court, dismssing speculation that she was about to retire.
The current court is split between Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas and Scalia, who tend to hold the traditional constitutionalist approach to rulings, and the majority of O'Connor, Breyer, Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginzburg, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens, who tend to believe in the concept of a "living Constitution" subject to changes in public opinion and interpretation.
Well lets see if they have the balls to take this on. The left in the senate demand they have a say in the presidental appointments to the court..lets see if we can get them to look at a clinton appointment that is not living up to his oath to defend the constitution. They would wail but if this traitor is kicked off . But then Bush baby would have an opportunity to at least appoint one.
I suspect the NWO judges have no plan to retire on a Pubby watch
This should be an interesting fillibuster...
That's not as unlikely as most people think. Only 3 of the 16 Chief Justices were elevated from Associate Justice.
They have a one seat majoirity, when Breyer was appointed the demos's had a 6 seat makjoirty.
Anyway, it still seems that you want to focus on that this is all the pubbies fault which it isn't. Like I said before there was a 200 year precedent for not filbustering judicial appointments and Dashole broke that in 2002.
Also the demo's had only to find 4 votes to break the filabuster, which they could have. The point remains that because of Clinton's election in 92, Breyer got on to SCOTUS.
I imagine that judges, like most people, think they could do their jobs better or more easily if they just had more power and freedom.
That law professors' feel their jobs would be easier if they didn't have to deal with the limitations in the Constitution.
It might even matter that judges who go to international legal conventions find that saying "the Constitution won't let me" puts them at a disadvantage to their peers!
There are any number of "innocent" motivations for these guys' view that the Constitution is just an impediment.
Breyer and her, and probably Ginsberg and the other liberals. They just didn't say it. Here is O'Connor saying basically that the United States of America should just be in essence one of the states of the EU, take marching orders from them (pigs must have toys, lifers in prison must have hardcore porn).
"Well, you always have the power of entering into treaties with other nations which also become part of the law of the land, but I can't see the day when we won't have a constitution in our nation."
Not to worry - notice that she says "we'll always have "a" constitution. Yeah, but what will it say? Will it be this one, or another one?
........
Some conservative House Republicans tried to revolt against this massive entitlement, only to have
Congressmen Mike Pence (R-IN) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) were the two heroes in this battle against a universal drug benefit which covers drugs for millionaires if they're 65, but does nothing for someone without a dime who happens to be 50 or 64. DeMint: "We just can't add another entitlement to Medicare. It risks bankrupting the whole program without adding some of these major reforms." Well, no one cares about that - not when seasoned citizens vote in such huge numbers!
RUSH LIMBAUGH
rush didnt vote reagan for president could be but good
;-)
"It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another.
The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.
A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them.
If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates.
But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.
The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield."
Sorry, but that was part of the Constitution from the beginning. Article I, Section 8 reads:
The Congress shall have power...However, Breyer and his ilk need to stop using Merriam-Webster's as their dictionary of choice, where "social interaction" takes precedence over "the exchange or buying and selling of commodities on a large scale involving transportation from place to place"....(t)o regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;....
Worse than dangerously close, he stomped on it and ran past, after kicking some dirt on it.
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