Strange, O'Connor looks like the she-hag demon from the movie Army of Darkness. Oh come on! I am not crazy...you guys have seen the movie. Am I wrong?
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.
Evidently, you didn't read the majority decision in Lawrence either. But feel free to offer uninformed opinions, it's what FR is all about.
Even the election of Mr. Bush, a goood, honest, bold man, has not checked the disrespect for law, the growth of aresponsible bureaucracies, the rise of the Nanny-Fascist-State.
The European Court of Human Rights has followed not Bowers but its own decision in Dudgeon v. United Kingdom. See P. G. & J. H. v. United Kingdom, App. No. 00044787/98, ¶ ;56 (Eur. Ct. H. R., Sept. 25, 2001); Modinos v. Cyprus, 259 Eur. Ct. H. R. (1993); Norris v. Ireland, 142 Eur. Ct. H. R. (1988).
Are the United Kingdom, Cyprus and Ireland are the 51, 52 and 53 states?
No evidence here of deferring to European sensibilities, none at all. Sheesh.
Out of the closet head-first here leaps the elitist Breyer pronouncing his dream for a socialist One World Government.
Question: Can Stephen Breyer's statements be deemed traitorous and sedititious to the Republic?
We all can expect that the 2nd Amendments 'Right To bear Arms' will be attacked voraciously by the Left in the coming years -- Breyer's future vote can already be considered tabulated.
The story on O'Connor: Reagan was blindsided by Baker.
Baker really wanted the First Female Justice for the Reagan Admin, and she was mentioned. Baker got a report on her which TOTALLY ELIMINATED all reference to her stridently pro-abortion legislative record (Az. State Senate.)
Several friends of Reagan (and pro-lifers) tried to set the record straight--to no avail. Baker blocked them at every turn.
By the way: the individual who wrote the glowing and horribly misleading report on O'Connor??
KENNETH STARR
You're beautiful when you're right.
....heck, all the time :^>
Or, maybe she'll just die.
Just before the last election, O'Connor was saying publicly that she was only staying on until Bush was elected. Now it looks as if Bush is "too conservative" for her, so she plans to stick it out.
"That's the meat."
NO doubt.
I certainly was not. I was saying that Kennedy was clearly replying to Burger vis a vis the Europeans. I made no comment whatsoever regarding the motivations of the other five justices which joined in full or in part.
Otherwise, I saw Breyer's comments and found them problematic in the extreme - I won't claim otherwise. How our Constitution fits into the governing documents of other nations should not be the slightest concern of the Supreme Court. If the Congress wishes to have the Constitution accord more closely to those of other nations, then that's another matter altogether. That's why we have the amendment process.
Strange, O'Connor looks like the she-hag demon from the movie Army of Darkness. Oh come on! I am not crazy...you guys have seen the movie. Am I wrong?
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