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Federal Judge says he sees 'no value' in studying the Constitution
// Personal Liberty Digest™
If you pay attention to conservative issues at all, you know that often the only thing standing in the way of a total progressive reformation of American law is the Constitution. And as American liberals become increasingly frustrated by constitutional roadblocks to their efforts to ban firearms and increase government power, they're looking for new ways to undermine and belittle the law of the land.
Advocates of a "living" judicial interpretation of the Constitution are nothing new. But with the Supreme Court's future hanging in the balance, the "loose constructionism" advocates among us are becoming more vocal.
In a recent op-ed for Slate, Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner made one of the boldest proclamations we've seen in a long time about the Constitution being outdated and in need of heavy modern interpretations.
Posner evidently sees so little value in the Constitution that he doesn't believe judges should even bother studying the document.
He writes: "I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation (across the centuries—well, just a little more than two centuries, and of course less for many of the amendments). Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21st century. Which means that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post–Civil War amendments (including the 14th), do not speak to today."
That technology has outgrown the limits on government set forth in the Constitution is a favorite argument of anti-2nd Amendment fanatics and surveillance hawks alike. Firearms in the 18th century, they say, were far less capable than they are today and the founders would see them now as a threat to public safety if they lived today. Likewise, they assert that 4th Amendment protections against government snooping in digital communications are moot because it would have been way more difficult to plan terror attacks with simply "papers, and effects."
In fact, Posner has argued forcefully in the past for allowing government to fully annihilate Americans' privacy rights.
"If the NSA wants to vacuum all the trillions of bits of information that are crawling through the electronic worldwide networks, I think that's fine," he reportedly said in 2014.
"Much of what passes for the name of privacy is really just trying to conceal the disreputable parts of your conduct," Posner added. "Privacy is mainly about trying to improve your social and business opportunities by concealing the sorts of bad activities that would cause other people not to want to deal with you."
By continuing to honor the restrictions on government set forth in the Constitution, Posner argues that Americans risk letting "the dead bury the living."
The post Federal Judge says he sees 'no value' in studying the Constitution appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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