Constitution does not ban sex bias, Scalia says

Oh please, start supporting sexism, win yourself a one way ticket to being hated.:icon_wink

 

I think that whole "originalism" idea is flawed. Everyone will have their own interpretations of things like the Constitution. Even if you try to get a view which is closer to what they viewed at the time, you're still taking a different view and you'll be affected by today's interpretation. Who knows? Maybe the people who wrote that amendment were forward-thinking and wanted equal rights for woman. That was only about 30 to 40 years before universal suffrage started to be introduced, which leaves it about the time frame for those first forward-thinkers to be contemplating it. Either way, constitutional law is inherently incredibly open to interpretation and this guy, really is just a bit of a nut.

 

Right. But it IS a part of the constitution that everyone has equal rights, and I think that includes women and lgbt even if it dones't specifically state.

 

Yeah, even if you could completely nail down for sure what the original writers of the constitution intended, there are issues they had no way of even considering that need to be addressed.

To cite examples that have already been dealt with in the past. Racism wasn't an issue that needed to be dealt with during their time. Feminine rights were something that they didn't currently have to deal with.

Even if it did occur to them that it might be an issue in the future, they were just writing about public issues that needed to be addressed at the time. They were trying to lay together a foundation to show the people of the time that they weren't going to abuse their positions the way the monarchy did. Stabilizing things and creating a strong leadership were their main concerns at the time.

Homosexuality wasn't a public issue back then. Sex was something that was, for the most part, kept in the privacy of the home and not shared openly. It was just the culture back then. It most likely wouldn't have occured to them that sexuality was ever going to be a legal issue.

Besides, do you think the founders could have envisioned the internet age, mass media, weapons of mass destruction, technology that could spy on every aspect of a person's life, etc? New issues come up every day that the founders never could have dreamed of.

So yeah, the originalism concept is pretty flawed.

 

i've read a court ruling by this guy that read "the idea that the constitution denies the governments ability to favor one religion is wrong" he is an idiot and how he is able to be a court justice is ridiculous....

---------- Post added 19th Sep 2010 at 05:33 PM ----------

oh yeah and he is big on interpreting things via inferring what those who wrote in meant and believing that things like the separation clause should be interpreted and used as it was meant to in 1789 instead of dealing with it as it applies to today's society. He is intensely socially conservative and definitely a person who wants to mesh religion and government, but only the christian religion.

 

Our Constitution says that all people are equally protected. That includes blacks, women, gays, and every other minority. It isn't an exception just because it isn't specifically mentioned. Anyone who thinks that is dumber than Tara Reid.

 

don't forget, there is a push in the republican party to repeal the 14 ammendment, in whole, or in part depending on who you talk to.

maybe scalia is warming up for that.