Thanks for Your Candor
NY gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer recently committed candor, advocating an "evolving" Constitution. Here's what he said:
As a citizen, and as the state's lawyer, I believe in an evolving Constitution. A flexible Constitution leaves room for us to consider not merely how the world once was, but how it ought to be.
And there it is. Of course, he misstates the meaning of a strict constructionist approach to constitutional interpretation -- it isn't about considering "how the world once was." Rather, it's about allowing the Constitution to have a fixed meaning, as other legally binding documents do, rather than being eternally "flexible" with a meaning that's dependent on the whims of elite opinion.
When Spitzer argues for a Constitution that allows "us" to "consider . . . how the world . . . ought to be," it's worth asking: Exactly who is "us"? You guessed it -- unelected, unaccountable judges who are beyond the electorate's reach. So if their vision of how the world "ought to be" conflicts with that of 99.9% of Americans'-- well, too bad for the rest of us.
The genius of America's democratic republic is that there are avenues for flexibility and "change," but they come through the political system, where they can be initiated and controlled through the people themselves, acting through their elected representatives.
In Eliot Spitzer's America, judges would be in charge of making the big decisions. Your role as a citizen would be simply to obey. Some democratic republic -- sounds more like an oligarchy to me.
As a citizen, and as the state's lawyer, I believe in an evolving Constitution. A flexible Constitution leaves room for us to consider not merely how the world once was, but how it ought to be.
And there it is. Of course, he misstates the meaning of a strict constructionist approach to constitutional interpretation -- it isn't about considering "how the world once was." Rather, it's about allowing the Constitution to have a fixed meaning, as other legally binding documents do, rather than being eternally "flexible" with a meaning that's dependent on the whims of elite opinion.
When Spitzer argues for a Constitution that allows "us" to "consider . . . how the world . . . ought to be," it's worth asking: Exactly who is "us"? You guessed it -- unelected, unaccountable judges who are beyond the electorate's reach. So if their vision of how the world "ought to be" conflicts with that of 99.9% of Americans'-- well, too bad for the rest of us.
The genius of America's democratic republic is that there are avenues for flexibility and "change," but they come through the political system, where they can be initiated and controlled through the people themselves, acting through their elected representatives.
In Eliot Spitzer's America, judges would be in charge of making the big decisions. Your role as a citizen would be simply to obey. Some democratic republic -- sounds more like an oligarchy to me.
posted by LadybugUSA at 2:34 PM
2 Comments:
List the laws he has broken and how he broke them. Not the ones you'd like to believe he broke, but the acutal laws he's broken.
Wrabkin, Marshall Art has put the challenge to you. Have you no answer?
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