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Politics : The Judiciary -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (260)	1/18/2007 9:35:33 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 817

One reply to that blog post Clayton E. Cramer (mail) (www): I've always found the strongest argument for originalism is simply this: it is a contract of restraint on governmental power, in both the elite and majoritian abuse flavors. If the determining force in interpreting the Constitution is not originalism, then what is left that acts as a restraint on power, besides the desires of the judiciary to act as superlegislators? I am not thrilled at the prospect of unlimited democracy, but if we abandon the idea of the Constitution as a contract across the generations, why bother to have any restraints but simple majority rule? This weird situation that has developed where judicial elites strike down the laws that they don't like (after scratching their heads for a long time to find some way to rationalize that they are "following the Constitution") while upholding laws that they do like (such as restrictive gun control laws) really reveals the non-originalist interpretive models as fig leaf power grabs. volokh.com