Alito Confirmed, Sworn In As 110th Supreme
In the closest vote since 1991, Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. has been confirmed as this country's next Supreme Court Justice, the 110th overall. This will be secondary news in the next few hours as President Bush tonight delivers his State of the Union address.
I watched enough of the confirmation hearings to be impressed by Mr. Alito. He appears to be, as President Bush described him today after his confirmation:
Sam Alito is a brilliant and fair-minded judge who strictly interprets the Constitution and laws and does not legislate from the bench.And that should be exactly what we all demand of each Supreme Justice. After all, the job description of every judge is "interprets the Constitution and laws". Making laws and conforming to change is the province of the Legislature, not the Judiciary. An analogy is that economics deals with the changing financial realm, while mathematics deals with the accepted understanding of how numbers relate to one another. Economics is constantly in flux; Mathematics aspires to a permanent understanding of the universal and immutable functions of numbers. Economists and Legislators react; Mathematicians and Jurists measure.
Mr. Alito's placement on the bench does not, nor should not, ensure any outcome of future cases; except as proscribe dictated by the strict interpretation of the Constitution and laws of this land. And, Alito seems to have the intellect to understand the criteria, and the integrity to be guided by the facts before him and how the law applies to those facts. Even with regard to that one issue, the one which fuels the venom flowing through the veins in every person of dogma, abortion.
There will continue to be those who believe that their position on this most controversial issue is so valid that a court should decide in their favor even if all of the legal "i's" have not been dotted or all of the procedural "t's" have not been crossed. With Alito, I both hope and believe we have a man who will not countenance shoddy legal arguments. We do not want him to simply rubber-stamp our preferences; we want to know that the law countenances each result.
NOTE: Text changed. I have deleted the word "proscribed" above and replaced it with "dictated". I thank John Mulligan for noting the confusing usage, and I thank Chris for his thoughts, And I especially thank Chris for his editorial corrections to my grammar. For, as Toby Keith sings, "I'm not as good as I once was", so your help is welcome. I am grateful for any help I can get.
Comments
You may want to go to Dictionary.com and look up "proscribe"......
Posted by: John Mulligan | February 2, 2006 10:11 AM
As a matter of fact John, there were some formatting errors with this article, so in my capacity as Editor of TBR I had the opportunity to review it with slightly more attention than I have been using with most other articles lately.
I had noticed when I read the article that Richard had used the word as he spelled it. And while I suspect he probably meant to use the word "prescribed", I made the conscious decision to leave it as is. Either Rick knows full well which word he used - in which case it's not my place to alter his meaning - or he made a grammatical mistake that I'm ready to ignore, because I prefer the meaning of the phrase as he wrote it, grammatically awkward though it might be.
The entire debate we're involved in right now over the Constitution is an argument over what exactly the document prescribes (i.e. "dictates"). Both sides earnestly believe their own position is so prescribed, and how strenuously they might adhere to their own judicial philosophy could be considered "strict interpretation". Some political-liberal First Amendment advocates, for instance, take a rather strict line on "freedom of speech" - lamenting just yesterday that Cindy Sheehan's First Amendment rights were violated when she was arrested for refusing to leave the State of the Union address while wearing a T-shirt with an anti-war slogan on it. Even though most people would call me a "strict constructionist" I don't interpret the First Amendment so strictly that I'd say Congress can't pass reasonable "time, manner, and place" restrictions inside the Capitol.
In short, if you think the word should be "prescribed" (i.e. "prohibited"), you're reducing the meaning of the phrase to nothingness. However if we use the word "proscribed", cleaning up the grammar will make it clear that there is a significant difference here.
Originalists believe the Constitution is a limiting document, and that freedom arises from all those things one might do that it does not specifically limit. Judicial Activists believe the Constitution is a document of ideals, and that freedom can be derived from an expansive interpretation of these ideals.
Justice Alito has said that he would keep an open mind on any case to be brought before him, but he is clearly from the Originalist camp. The full sentence could therefore read: "Mr. Alito's placement on the bench does not, nor should not, ensure any outcome of future cases; except [to overturn violations] as proscribed by the strict interpretation of the Constitution...."
Yes, this is a significant change, but one I thought was implied by the original wording. Perhaps it wasn't, but what I don't believe Justice Alito will do - and I dearly hope he won't, because I strenuously oppose Judicial Activism - is use the Constitution of the United States as his own personal prescription pad, through which he can cure whatever he thinks ails us. And changing the word to "prescribed" similarly insinuates wrongly - but in the opposite direction.
Posted by: Chris![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.theblackrepublican.net/nav-commenters.gif)
|
February 2, 2006 12:42 PM