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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (6018)	8/19/2001 5:55:17 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

Personally, I think that your using a constructionist argument and calling it an agenda. You're correct that the Federal highway system was constructed under the auspices of defense, you call it a ruse. I think it's a legitimate interpretation. Go constructionist and a lot of the Federal government goes away. While many people would cheer at that thought. It doesn't take but a few minutes to give any one of them second thoughts on that, IMO. WRT the "right to privacy" and abortion. The Court had a case before it on abortion. It stretches the imagination that the Justices sat around and decided that they had a "political agenda" to stop contraception and abortion and manipulated their decision to that end [as a previous poster has suggested]. If they did that would be an agenda. But you can also look at the amendments and reasonably conclude that there is an implied right to privacy in the Constitution independent of the abortion issue. The strongest one being search and seizure. Prohibiting "search" is, IMO, has an implied right to privacy and I think a legitimate interpretation. I could use the activism [or constructionist] argument in a variety of ways. In the 2nd amendment for example, there is nothing specific as to which arms are or are not protected. So the constructionist might say that all arms are protected. The constructionist argument is sometimes used on the census. Only an enumeration is required...no other question should be asked of the people. To continue the constructionist argument there is nothing that specifically calls for any SEC regulations. Wipe out all SEC regulations and see what happens to independent accounting. The constuctionist position was, in effect, invalidated shortly after the Constitution was ratified. There are still Justices that tend to lean towards a more constructionist view, but I still don't see "agendas". I suppose you could also say that the Courts' decisions on Civil Rights were activism or they had an agenda. It doesn't seem to me that those decisions were driven by popular opinion. I think the Court believed it was doing the politically popular thing that legislatures would not do. The Framers did the best they could in terms of making the Court immune from popular opinion, the was in fact their intent, by making the positions appointed ones and for life. The legislature and executive is more subject to the pressures of public opinion given they are elected positions. On the balance I think the Framers pretty much succeeded. If I were to interpret "legislating from the bench" I might say that the Civil Rights decisions were more legislating from the bench than the Roe v. Wade decision. In the Civil Rights decisions the Court directed remedial action, where as in Roe v. Wade the struck down legislation [which I think is substantively a different kind of action]. The Constution says nothing about terms limits, though the Articles of Confederation did. Are term limits un-Constitutional? If the Court ruled that they are un- Constitutional, would that be activism or legislating from the bench? Line item veto? Interpretation or activism? Then there is the War Powers Act...questionable Constitutionality there, but no one wants to bring it before the Court...[same argument as the line item veto; Congress abrogating it's authority]. jttmab