To: one_less who wrote (9478 ) 2/3/2017 6:37:09 PM From: Lane3 Read Replies (2) | Respond to This is my understanding of Will's point.Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote, "If you want aspirations, you can read the Declaration of Independence," but "there is no such philosophizing in our Constitution," which is "a practical and pragmatic charter of government." The proposition is that all persons are created equal in their possession of natural rights, to "secure" which — the Declaration's word — the government is instituted. Will's point is that the philosophy in the Declaration is subsumed by/incorporated into the Constitution. Scalia didn't see it that way. He hopes that Gorsuch differs from Scalia in this regard.The drama of American democracy derives from the tension between the natural rights of the individual and the constructed right of the community to make such laws as the majority desires. Natural rights are affirmed by the Declaration; majority rule, circumscribed and modulated, is constructed by the Constitution and a properly engaged judiciary is duty-bound to declare majority acts invalid when they abridge natural rights. So it's Congress's job to write laws to please the majority and the Judiciary's job to make sure that the majority isn't trampling on the natural rights each of us has as claimed in the Declaration in addition to the stated Constitutional rights. To me this is the essence of what this country is about.
