Fill In The Blanks Constitution?

Geoffrey R. Stone argues that judicial activism is consistent with our founders' intent.

I disagreed.

Fill in the blanks Constitution? What a load of baloney!

Of course, this is what progressives believe. It allows them to make up the rules as they go along. But it is not so.

The Constitution wasn't written in a vacuum, and we have the historical documentation that puts very well into content what the framers intended.

This editorial is so permeated by the progressive worldview that I imagine the author can't even see it.

Clearly the Constitution upholds the right to free association -- private organizations should be free to include and exclude whomever they want to on whatever basis they want to. And yet the author holds a judicial ruling saying just that concerning the Boy Scouts of America as an example of conservative judicial activism?

It is a huge overstatement to say that the Heller decision says that the Constitution prohibits any regulation of guns. It just says you can't outlaw them or regulate them to the point of being useless.

Affirmative Action clearly violates the ideas of free association and of equal protection. Everyone is to be TREATED equally under the law. But to progressives, unequal outcomes proves unequal treatment. It's equal outcomes they are after, and they seek it by restricting liberty and property rights to those who they perceive as having an "unfair" advantage. In this, they anoint themselves the arbiters of "fair".

If a judge undoes a ruling that was handed down through judicial activism -- by following original intent, that doesn't make the judge an activist judge. It means the judge is a good judge.

Now to the point that there certainly CAN be judicial activism from the conservative side -- the fact that there has been doesn't justify more of the same from either side.

Laws get passed by Congress, and judges interpret that law and they are required to take into account the lawmakers' intent. They have access to the congressional record. Laws aren't made in a vacuum and it was never intended that judges make up what they think the law should be. That is not their role. At least not in the original design.