Free Republic

Sooner or later the Living Constitution will meet bestiality. The sex-with-animals crowd as alternative lifestyle is on display in a film which just premiered at the Sundance Festival. The "internet-based zoophile community" portrayed in the film is not sensationalized or condemned according to the account Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times. I have not seen the movie, but I have seen modern jurisprudence, which is beginning to show preliminary signs of extending its embrace of relativism to interspecies sex. In 2005, a Seattle man died in a sex incident with a stallion, and press coverage called the subject to...

LOS ANGELES, March 14 (UPI) -- Los Angeles County faces tens of millions of dollars in damages for bedding thousands of prisoners on mattresses on concrete floors. The practice violates the Constitution and is symptomatic of serious problems in the crowded, riot-torn jail system, a federal judge tentatively ruled Monday. U.S. District Court Judge Dean D. Pregerson gave lawyers for the county, and Stephen Yagman -- representing the class of floor-sleeping inmates he estimated at up to 300,000 -- time to make additional arguments before a final ruling. Roger Granbo, assistant county counsel, pointed out the case "is still pending."...

    PONCE, Puerto Rico (AP) -- People who think the Constitution would break if it didn't change with society are "idiots," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says.     In a speech Monday sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, Justice Scalia defended his long-held belief in sticking to the plain text of the Constitution "as it was originally written and intended."     "Scalia does have a philosophy; it's called originalism. That's what prevents him from doing the things he would like to do," Justice Scalia told more than 100 politicians and lawyers from this U.S. island territory.     He said that, according to his...

Scalia Says Opponents Are 'Idiots' By JONATHAN EWING, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago People who believe the Constitution would break if it didn't change with society are "idiots," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says. In a speech Monday sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, Scalia defended his long-held belief in sticking to the plain text of the Constitution "as it was originally written and intended." "Scalia does have a philosophy, it's called originalism," he said. "That's what prevents him from doing the things he would like to do," he told more than 100 politicians and lawyers from this...

It ought to be a major intellectual event in constitutional law when a Justice of the Supreme Court comes forward publicly to explain his theory of judging. Explanation is needed, for by now nobody familiar with the work of the Court believes it confines its rulings to the principles of the historic Constitution. There have always been instances when the Court voted its sympathies rather than anything resembling the Constitution, but over the last half century the divergence between the document and the decisions has sharply increased. Indeed, the criticism that the Court routinely departs from the Constitution’s principles, as...

I was listening to Mark Levin's show tonite, on the drive home. He had a liberal lawyer (Ari was his name) that wanted to debate the constitution with Mark. He (Ari) started with the issue of the "3/5ths of a person "(only Ari did not have the ratio correct) that was orginally used for counting slaves, for the population census used for apportioning seats in Congress. Mark had an idea where he was headed and cut him off, asking him if he knew why the 3/5ths was used - which Ari didn't. As Mark explained to everyone, the 3/5ths was...

GEORG HEGEL was a German philosopher of the early 19th century. Hegel believed that history unfolds through a "dialectical" process, in which each stage is the product of the contradictions inherent in the ideas that defined the preceding one. Within these tensions and contradictions, Hegel believed, the philosopher can discern a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity. He called that unity "the absolute idea." History consists of an inevitable and progressive march to that idea.Until recently it appeared that Marxism (which borrowed Hegel's dialectic but replaced "ideas" with economic systems and classes--hence "dialectical materialism") would represent Hegel's most enduring contribution to the...

A Supreme Property Rights Disaster In The Making More Kelo on the SCOTUS horizon?... [James S. Burling] 8/15/05 After a term marked by the Supreme Court’s utter contempt for property rights, those of us who happen to think there is something special about allowing old widows to keep their homes were not prepared for an even more bitter defeat. Yet, that is what President Bush handed us with the nomination of John Roberts. The battle over property rights is not a conservative versus liberal thing. It’s more a struggle between those who believe in the power of the state to...

We recently examined the inexplicable rulings of the Supreme Court in its last session that turned the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 10th Amendments upside down under the principle that the Constitution is a 'living document' and therefore subject to being tortured until it said what the majority of the Court wanted it to say. I opined at the time that, at long last, the Constitution had been tortured 'to death.' That really isn't a problem, since it was always intended to be a dead instrument. The principle of a 'living constitution' is that, as a 'living' document, it is capable...

The subject of constitutional interpretation may seem like a topic best fitted for an ivory-tower debate, but it actually has a very real and dramatic impact on daily life (as will be demonstrated shortly). In recent years, two competing viewpoints have emerged. Probably the first exposure most citizens had to the two views came during the 2000 presidential debates. When asked what type of judges should be placed on the bench, candidate Bush responded: “I believe that the judges ought not to take the place of the legislative branch of government . . . and that they ought to look...

The Living Constitution is dead Judicial recognition of a Living Constitution causes the very problem that the idea of a living Constitution is supposed to solve. Proponents of a Living Constitution want a more flexible document. When the Supreme Court issues a decision the result is to lock in current opinion and to forbid opinions from evolving in the future. Justice Kennedy along with four Justices recently declared that it is cruel and unusual punishment to execute a person for a crime they committed as a minor. Justice Kennedy discovered an "Evolving Standard" that he perceives to be a long...

The Constitution is not a "living" document that changes with the times U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says, but is to be interpreted on what the Founding Fathers meant at the time they drafted the Constitution. That's how he determines the meaning of the document he told an audience Monday at Nashville's Vanderbilt University according the Vanderbilt Hustler.com. Story Continues Below "The Constitution is not a living organism," Scalia insisted. Taking a position at odds with current opinion that holds that the Constitution changes in order to meet the needs of a changing society and thus acts as a...

The Supreme Court of Canada scaled a new peak in hallucinatory constitutional interpretation on Dec. 9, 2004. In an advisory opinion sustaining the Canadian Parliament's power to recognize same-sex "marriages," the best and the brightest of Canada's jurists insisted the nation's constitution was an organic "living tree," not a petrified forest incapable of new limbs and climbing treetops. The "living tree" standard of interpretation, the justices say, gives birth to "progressive" laws and policies addressing "the realities of modern life." But like the emperor's new clothes, a "living tree" legal doctrine is naked of substance. It empowers the Canadian Supreme...

O'Connor: U.S. must rely on foreign law Justice says, 'The impressions we create in this world are important' Posted: October 31, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com American courts need to pay more attention to international legal decisions to help create a more favorable impression abroad, said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at an awards dinner in Atlanta. "The impressions we create in this world are important, and they can leave their mark," O'Connor said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The 73-year-old justice and some of her high court colleagues have made similar appeals to foreign law,...

Over the Fourth of July weekend, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was nearly squished. A giant beam nearly fell on her as she sat on the stage during a celebration of the U.S. Constitution. While I wish no harm to befall O'Connor, there was a Tom Wolfe flavor to the near-death mishap. For a brief moment, it felt like the real authors of the Constitution were reaching out to punish the personification of our "living Constitution."After all, O'Connor is the Constitution these days. Because she's almost always the tie-breaker in every close vote on the court, she's been dubbed...

The biggest election issue in 2002 The media's passion to report what is going to happen tomorrow rather than what already happened is filling newspaper pages and TV channels with predictions of whether Republicans will retain the House and/or win the Senate. The predictions are virtually worthless. The coming election won't decide whether or not we go to war, whether the Homeland Security bill will pass, whether seniors will get their prescription drugs paid for by the taxpayers, or whether Social Security will be privatized. But the 2002 election will decide whether constitutionalists or judicial activists, control the federal judiciary...