Activists need to succeed or fail in the Legislature, not the Judiciary.
Activists have perverted the purpose of the 14th Amendment from insuring that no state could, for example, deny a particular race, or ethnicity, a business license, simply based on their ethnicity - to regulating the rules of golf, as in the Casey Martin case, which was based on the authority of the ADA, which was based on the 14th Amendment.
The Lawyers are smothering out our liberty, because the 14th Amendment makes them much more efficient at imposing their will on the entire country, instead of having to do it one state at a time.
When NJ rejected the 14th Amendment, it said it would lead to a gross enlargement of the judicial power.
Vague provisions and terms expand the range of acceptable interpretive options for any interpreter, whether that interpreter is a legislator, an executive or a judge. Competent draftsman have always known that. When a competent draftsman chooses to use a vague or indefinite provision, he knows that he is delegating to future interpreters a greater range of options than he will be delegating if he chooses a more specific or definite provision.
The vagueness in the 14th is orders of magnitude greater than the vagueness in the 4th Amendment.
Well, just the term "unreasonable" in the Fourth Amendment delegates to interpreters quite a bit of latitude. But I certainly agree with you on the Fourteenth Amendment. If you just read the equal protection clause all by itself, it's almost unmanageably unclear.
Activists need to succeed or fail in the Legislature, not the Judiciary.
Activists know now and always have known that if what they want to accomplish is arguably constitutional, their best bet for success is to have broad public support and a friendly legislature. Any group that attempts to depend exclusively upon the judiciary to protect its interests is foolish.
Activists have perverted the purpose of the 14th Amendment from insuring that no state could, for example, deny a particular race, or ethnicity, a business license, simply based on their ethnicity - to regulating the rules of golf, as in the Casey Martin case, which was based on the authority of the ADA, which was based on the 14th Amendment.
I play golf, but I don't know anything about the reasoning of the Casey Martin case. A lot of conservatives demand that our judges be "strict" constructionists (just read the law and apply it), but how can a "strict" constructionist read the equal protection clause and limit its application to race or ethnicity? And if you want to shift to original intent, consider this:
"Thus, section 1 of the fourteenth amendment, on its face, deals not only with racial discrimination, but also discrimination whether or not based on color. This cannot have been accidental, since the alternative considered by the Joint Committee, the civil rights formula, did apply to racial discrimination." Bickel, The Original Understanding and the Segregation Decision 69 Harvard Law Review 59-63.
For their part, the courts have most aggressively used the equal protection clause in the areas of race and ethnicity. I think we're lucky that they've avoided taking a "strict" constructionist approach.