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.
There are sooooo many more where he came from. They are lawyers. He is, as Scalia pointed out, "the product of a law-profession culture." They all are. The challenge we face is incredibly deep rooted. Our legal system, which means our political system, depends on lawyers. And the lawyer culture is, as you know, not exactly federalist, or interested in original meaning. It's a huge, huge problem, and one Stephen Breyer is just a noticable piece of it.
We can still demand the damn pubbies get their asses in gear.
We know damn well the democrats pay zero attention to anything the unmanipulated people have to say, because they tell us again and again to shut up and take their brand of socialism 'for fairness', 'for the children', for a woman's right to choose', 'for the environment', for sexual privacy rights' ... well, destroying Western Civilization's greatest achievement (this nation, by God!) in the name of fairness or choice or the environment won't make a damn bit of difference to this planet 500 years from now when the socialists have succeeded in bringing about the final death of the species in civilized arrangement because of totalitarian Islam triggering human exteinction rather than coexist.
Let's get to work and impeach this socialist bastard, NOW! ... Maybe Dubya will take notice of what his voting base thinks and what treachery it will not tolerate!
The politicians are encouraged by the people they hear from the most and not necessarily the ones who are pissed-off the most. They respond to the majority of there constituancies....that's how they get reelected. If they don't get reelected, then the bad guys take control, and we get more angrier than we are now, the country goes further down the tubes, and we blame it on the candidate.....the big cop-out.
Exactly what I told my significant other recently. And we will not go out with some large resistance bang, but with a whimper. However, I and my brothers at VetsCoR will continue the fight in our small way.
Why would a politician respond to a constituency he has no chance of losing, with anything more than a little lip service?
If there's no cost for a broken promise or a bad policy, what leverage is left?
If one voter is in the bag, the politician is free to make promises to the next one.
I've been waiting to see a SCOTUS member publically rationalize his way around the INTENT issue regarding the Constitution. Not a very strong arguement, but here it is in plain view.
The 5 people who determine what the Constitution means do not have a letter after their name. They, a majority of five on the Supreme Court, interpret the Constitution....not the Founding Fathers, the Congress, the President or you or me. No one can absolutely know what a person with a lifetime appointment will do once seated on the bench.
It's you, who put your hero worship ideology ahead of the country.
And you accuse me of being backwards? You never heard me refer to anyone as my hero, and you never will, so where are you coming from? Who is your hero?
There is no other practical recourse than to use my vote and my voice for change. It seems to me that the Whig Party disintegrated under intense divisiveness. The time for glad-handing is over. Either the current Congress should start acting like the Congress of the Constitution, or both parties should be thrown out.
The political parties make the laws, appoint the justices and judges, raise or lower taxes, spend more or less, etc....not a group of pissed-off (disaffected) Conservatives or Liberals.
That's right. So it takes a RADICAL solution, and not the usual blind loyalty to a party. Any solution will involve a sizeable number of people who are fed up and ready to BOLT the 2-party system. The people ultimately rule. Sadly, for that to happen, it will require an American population that GIVES A FLIP about its freedoms and where this nation is headed! Preasently, I don't see anything but apathy and ignorance fed by rampant narcisstic hedonism. I don't have much hope that a total destruction of our Republic can be avoided, but I will do my part - that is ALL I can do. Do you have a better plan? If you do, then let's have it.
You and I did not use the leverage thing in '92 and we were correct. Unfortunately, enough voters took the leverage thing seriously....and screwed us all for at least a generation. This country can take only so much leveraging.
Unbelievable!!!!
Eaker
She will one day have to answer some real journalistic questions and that is when the veil of the, hopefully few, that still believe and worship her will be removed. In the meantime, they will be their own demise. You reap what you sow.
I think your analysis is a bit cockeyed.
When Politicians put self-interest ahead of principle, we all get hurt.
If you start there, you'll actually begin to understand Government.
Every elected official now in office was put there by "the people who ultimately rule" as you refer to them. The people have ruled — and we have the government that resulted from that rule. So......which people, or group, or coven, or elite.....should ultimately rule, in your opinion?
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